Devotion 361 - Kindergarten

The kids run outside, they don’t even notice the temperature.  They are supposed to be piling in the car but none of them even see the vehicle.

There is snow on the ground and it draws them like butterflies to flowers.

Seconds later, my husband and I can typically count on two hands how long it will be before someone will be screaming and wearing a snowball. 

The littlest among them, typically spared the fight notices she can see her breath in the air.  She comments daily on the magic of winter.  Of all the things I love about children, this beautiful fascination with the simplest of things is one of my very favorite.  Somewhere in the growing up we forget the simple, and make life complex.  I often want to go back to the kindergarten of the soul.

We load in the car now all six of us.  There are just a handful of days before the eldest goes back to college.  I want to squeeze the juice out of every sweet moment. 

At first I scold myself, the drive is a short thirty minutes yet all four of them were smart enough to bring a book or toy.  I had my book, my new read sitting on the kitchen table but forgot it in the haste of making coffee and peace with the snowball victim.

 

I want to make the most out of our short time so I begin peppering the oldest with questions.   Our eldest was born old.  He has wisdom in his soul that reminds me of his granddad.  I love that about him.

We talk about the New Year.  I had resolved many years ago not to make resolutions, but there is something about a fresh batch of three-hundred plus days that sucker me in to wondering what I can change, or do or make or plan.  So I ask my children, what they hope for in the New Year.  The oldest responds quickly.  Something about finding joy no matter his circumstance.    

It is easy to speak wisdom but when it’s spoken back flying the flag of the New Year it is daunting and demanding.

Don’t we all want to change in some way?  Don’t we want all our decisions to matter and pave the change we hope to make.  Perhaps we hope to change the physical or the financial. 

Perhaps it is the home front;  it is not lost on me that every store has bins stacked up to the ceiling at their front doors prodding me to organize and alphabetize. 

Then there is the spiritual, the one the oldest has already mentioned.  I think of aspirations to write more, read more and study more but this joy he speaks of; I am convinced it is not in the doing, but in the deciding; the seeing and the hearing.  It is the seizing of joy instead of the stalking of happiness.

Aquinas said almost one thousand years ago the words I need to paste on my forehead,

“If, then, you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because He Himself is the way.”

There, the secret of finding joy and expelling fear, living a New Year without the choke-hold of happiness as my goal, finding Him, surrendering to Him and seeing Him in the hard, the simple and the still.

Yes, the decisions.  Not the one to write a book or to get the neighbor saved, the decision to daily, hourly and in the moment be available to Him.  To take time seeing glory in the snow and to reflect glory in the simple. 

Yes, my neighbor needs Jesus, but she may need a smiling face and a conversation before she will have ears to hear His name.

Yes, my children need the Gospel, but it may be found in the extra minutes of conversation and multiplication.

Kindergarten, where I learn friendship is a gift, Jesus is always there and life is lived one moment by one glorious moment at a time.

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me; your right hand will hold me fast…

Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
– Psalm 139: 9-10, 14b