She's only five years old. But she's already saying she loves Jesus and Jesus loves her. Should I correct her and tell her we'll have to wait and see?
I don't think so.
Do I have some inside source for knowing the names in the Book of Life? Not hardly.
Today I got to have lunch with my granddaughters. It's always special. Today was no exception. After lunch, we returned to Abby's classroom and I got to watch her cut out items that went into various groups and glue them to the corresponding topics on a piece of paper. Afterwards, while the teacher helped slower students, the children came to me and showed me their papers. I was to check to see if all the clothing, food and shelter items were in the right spaces. It was pure joy.
Some kids hugged me when I told them they could put their work in their cubbyholes. Some asked me my name...again. One little girl, Alana, handed me her paper and as I was scanning it, she announced, "I'm a Christian!" A bit startled by her profession, I stopped looking at her paper and smiled. (Honestly, I wondered for a second if I should even acknowledge what she'd just professed. We were in a public school, after all.) Her eyes were sparkling like a child who'd just been surprised at a birthday party. Her face beamed and she grinned from ear to ear. I took a chance.
"You are? How wonderful!"
"Yes, I am. I started going to church a while back."
"You did?"
"Yes; and now I'm a Christian. It is a Baptist Church."
"Well, Alana, I'm very happy for you. I'm a Christian, too." I handed her paper to her to put in her cubby; she returned to her seat, and I considered a few things.
Wonder why she felt led to share that she was a Christian with me. Wonder why at that very moment, in that room while I was checking papers, she was one who had me check her paper and then felt it necessary to share that bit of news. I didn't know this child.
Whenever I went to visit Abby in school, I often read a book and watched them make something that corresponded with the book. But my attention usually centered upon Abby--the other children in passing. I could only tell you one other child's name in the whole class.
Yet, there in the middle of her kindergarten classroom addressing a complete stranger to herself, a child felt led to express her belief that she was a Christian. Why me? Why then? Why her? I considered my Savior's words to me: "Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not." Who was I to argue?
Should I have taken time to figure out just how she came to that conclusion? Should I have asked if she understood the Sovereignty of God or whether she agreed with Limited Attonement? I don't think so.
Alana, came with the most innocent profession I've heard in my 30-plus years as Christian. She didn't walk down an aisle. She didn't have someone telling her she was going to hell. She didn't have a prolonged chorus being sung in her tender ears. Nope. She was standing in line to have her kindergarten paper checked in the middle of a state-run public school classroom. No one had mentioned God, Jesus or church. Yet here she was in her brown-eyed beauty announcing, "I'm a Christian!"
No altar call was needed today. And to be clear, I'm not saying that Alana didn't give her life to Jesus at an altar in that Baptist Church she is attending. But I am saying, something had already happened in that child's life. And I'd call that something, Someone named Jesus. And Jesus thought it very important that she tell me. And I thought it most important that I tell you.
Isn't this a blessing? Isn't this wonderful? Isn't God good? [copyrighted, SelahV Today, 2007]
