Kids who know Jesus don’t need to know how to count

or

Beware the message not written on a blank paper in the hands of a child

 

Romans 8 declares that all creation has been subjected to frustration. Can I get an amen. And it worked. I was frustrated. Things hadn’t gone as I had planned in the church. I probably needed to stop planning.

I believed in an Acts 2 church, but unlike Acts 2, numbers weren’t being added to our church daily. The Spirit of God was moving in our church, but numbers from our church were being added to other States. Daily. New Jersey is a very transient state, and people in our church were transienting en masse. Folks were fleeing New Jersey and its four Terrible T’s: Traffic, Taxes, Tolls and Temperatures. Maybe I wasn’t frustrated. Maybe I was jealous. Maybe we just hadn’t yet reached the second Act in our chapter.

As the numbers were subtracted from our church daily, so were the finances. I would stand before the dwindling congregation three times a week, encourage them to trust in their God, build them up in their most holy faith, and then I would go home and worry. My name is Derhay. I’m a normal pastor. Sometimes.

To add to my flock-fleeing frustration, I was one day from Sunday’s service and still sermonless. Had no direction. Not even a topic. I was subjected to a non-subject frustration. And tomorrow, I’d have much less people to share my sermonless with. Maybe I should go the direction of my Act 1 Transientors—Other Stateward. Maybe I would even take me with me. Until I found out why everyone else didn’t. Then I’d send me back.

I stood in my Normal Frustrated Pastor position in my kitchen, arms folded. My church office was 50 feet away, and it was calling me to come prepare Sunday’s message. But I didn’t want to answer it. Maybe it would leave a message.

The frustration question Gideon asked on his threshing floor was threshing through my mind:  “God, if You’re with us, then why…?” I knew better than to ask it, so I just stood there thinking it as loudly as I could. Beating it on my kitchen threshing floor with all my muted emoji. I was thoroughly enjoying my sermonless sulking until she walked in.

She was 5 years old. She was cute. She was mine. She talked so much one wondered if she ever inhaled.

And she often heard from God.

She entered my mood threshing room with no apologies, holding a folded blank piece of paper. That would only be unusual if she ever did anything usual. But she didn’t. She was blabbing as she came. As usual. There wasn’t room in my mood room for this.

“Do you have a Bible?” little Leah asked. See what I mean? I’m in the middle of some serious spiritual grumbling here, channeling my inner wilderness Israel, and I now have to answer to the Impish Inquisition! I’m a pastor. I have more Bibles than the Utah Vatican. “Of course I have a Bible!” I groused, “It’s over there by the phone.” Maybe she would read the verse that says “children, leave your father aloneth.” She did go get the Bible, but she didn’t leave me aloneth.

“Pick a page, Dad” came out of the cute but constantly moving lower portion of her face. “What?” asked the man standing where I was. “A page Dad, pick a page.” Okay, my mood was really not in the room for this. “210” I said, hoping she’d go that many steps away. She didn’t. She flipped through my Bible that I probably should have been reading, and said “I can’t find page 210 Dad.” When do 5-year-old’s learn to count past 11? Remind me to call that vampire on Sesame Street.

I took the Bible she held out to me, flipped it open. It opened right to page…210. My sulks were immediately silenced; my suspicions were awakened.

How many pages are there in the Bible? I’ll wait while you check. So what were the chances of me opening right to page 210? It looked like Jesus might have walked in the room with little Leah. Again. I thought maybe I should see what was on page 210.

My mood froze mid-thresh. It was Judges Chapter 6, the story of Gideon. The man who asked the question we’re not supposed to ask. The man who mood-stood before the Angel of the Lord on a threshing floor, and cried “if God is with us, then why…?” My 5-year-old who couldn’t count had transiented my mood to the State of Spiritual Shock. Maybe she wasn’t sent to pester me, but to pastor me. Maybe she was sent with the answer to my questions, written on a folded blank sheet of paper and her child-faith heart.

She sticks her blank folded paper into the Book of Gideon, page 210, closes the Bible I’m still holding, pushes it gently toward me and says “Dad, you have to read that page, okay?” Then she quietly transients to some other part of the house. Leaving me standing there holding the answer to my questions, the topic for my sermon, and a heart full of humble pie.

I answered my office call, told it I’d be there in a minute. But first I had to go hug a wonderfully annoying little kid who couldn’t count, tell her how Jesus had just used her, and that she wasn’t getting transiented any time soon. Not unless I could go with her. Not knowing that years later, she and I would be filling in blank pages together while we wandered.