Holy Work

 I was sitting in church one Sunday and when it came time to pray I watched a beautiful little girl carefully lace her chubby fingers together and gently bow her head.

My heart swelled with joy at this tender moment.  She had been taught to pray.  Imagine the difference that makes in a life.

To know she is a child of a loving God and that she can talk to Him.  What could be more impactful? 

Parenting is hard work.  Our society makes it difficult to hold onto the joy and to always be focusing on yet another way we may have gotten it wrong and scarred them for life.  

Much of the work feels monotonous and tiring.  It can feel thankless and messy and unglamorous. It is also full of thousands of smiles and glimpses of Heaven.  

And all those tiny services and teaching moments weave together backdrops for precious souls to thrive.  This is incredibly holy work.

So holy that Jesus himself instructed,  "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:14)."

So how do we do this holy work? By following the master teacher.  Jesus' ministry was also an accumulation of thousands of tiny services and acts of kindness.  

As social reformer, Charles Henry Parkhurst, explained, "The completed beauty of Christ’s life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty—talking with the woman at the well; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart that kept him out of the Kingdom of Heaven; … teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; kindling a fire and broiling fish that his disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore from a night of fishing, cold, tired, and discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of [Christ’s] interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed with what is minute.”

Become engrossed in the minute.  Dance together.  Rock them and hug them.  Read with them.  Guide them.  Show them the wonders of our world.  Teach them the commandments and to both love and fear God.  One tiny act at a time.  One tiny lesson at a time.  

Like how to pray.