Day Four- Children's Faith

Welcoming Baby Jesus

"So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger." Luke 2:16 TNIV


    Last year after we finished putting up the Christmas tree and decorating the house, Bean and Abu insisted that we needed to do more. The small Nativity sets we had weren't enough, we needed another one. So for the next hour they busied themselves putting together something quite special.
    Abu brought out her horse barn for the manger. Bean found Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
    Barbie in her hot pink pencil skirt became Mary by wrapping a paper towel around her head like a robe. Ken became Joseph after he also received a paper towel treatment. And a Barbie baby was Jesus, lying in a little pink crib.
    They both worked together to find the stable animals. Cows, lambs, goats, piglets, and pigs surrounded the trio and a horse became a camel with two cotton ball humps taped to its back.
    Bean and Abu set up the Nativity under the tree and there it stayed for more than a week before slowly the toys were reclaimed as toys again and played with. But for just a little while they were so much more than toys.
    They represented Bean's and Abu's faith. Innocent, simple and eager. There wasn't questions and anger. There wasn't doubt. It was a simple moment of believing.
    I miss that. When I was child it was so easy to just have faith. Now I struggle with it.

   I feel blessed to have witnessed such a sincere act of faith. Thank you Bean and Abu for reminding me how simple it can be.
 
   The next part of our journey then is to pay attention to the children. For they remember how to have faith.
   Simply and sincerely.