The Kingdom of Heaven

When your children hurt, you hurt.

In fact, when they hurt, you hurt a little more.

Such an occurrence happened recently. Son #1 came over to where I sat in the recliner. He crawled up in my lap and covered up with the throw blanket we keep on the chair.

He looked up at me, his eyes somber, and said, “Dad, I think I’m ugly.”

I was surprised by that five-word statement. I looked down at him, and tears filled my eyes as I looked into his.

“Son, why do you think that?”

“Cause someone told me that I was ugly. And he said he hated me, too.”

Well, he poured out his heart to me, and I found out that this person had also shoved him really hard and hurt him.

And so it begins at only three years old.

Well, as you can imagine, I told him he could always come to me with anything. And I’ve been calling him handsome ever since.

Because the truth is, he’s a rather handsome lad if I do say so myself.

And I’ve been letting him know that there are mean people in the world and that he shouldn’t ever join their ranks.

I know that at only three, he doesn’t understand the world’s standard of what they consider beautiful. He’s only concerned with making friends and having a good time.

And I believe children see through the outward façade we try to put on. The prophet Samuel said that God looks at the heart, and I think the group that gets closer to being able to do that more than anyone else is children.

Jesus said of the Children, “…of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

I have to be honest; I’ve never seen a child and thought, “There’s no hope.” Every child has potential.

I remember a story one of my former pastors told me about when he was a child. He said that he was playing outside the schoolhouse, and as he ran past the front steps, his teacher said loud enough for him to hear, “That Charles Barnett, he’ll never amount to anything.”

He was telling that story in his eighties.

But the truth is you can make choices that cause you to excel. No matter what anyone says or thinks about you.

With God’s Grace and help, you can achieve great things.

And I want to make sure my boys know that.

to anyone holding onto the past,
– Caleb