Let the little children come to me

Grace parish­ioner Jef­frey Kem­mer­er is the fea­tured blog­ger for our dioce­san pil­grim­age, in this sea­son af­ter the Epiphany. You can fol­low his dai­ly blog, which will con­tin­ue un­til Lent.

I am a parish­ioner at Grace Al­len­town. One of the no­table fea­tures of the church is the lack of pews. Wor­ship is con­duct­ed in a cir­cle of chairs or at the al­tar. There is nowhere to hide. We are for­tu­nate to have our youngest parish­ioner with us most Sun­days. She is a one year old tod­dler who is re­al­ly sur­pris­ing­ly coör­di­nat­ed and steady on her feet. She has amaz­ing pa­tience and sits qui­et­ly for much of the service.

Many Sun­days, there comes a time when her ex­u­ber­ance (or per­haps her break­fast calo­ries) over­pow­ers her pa­tience and she is off on an ad­ven­ture, ex­plor­ing the church and her fel­low parish­ioners. Cast­ing cau­tion aside, she races from place to place, ex­am­in­ing all the won­ders she dis­cov­ers — won­ders that are in­vis­i­ble to us old­er folk. In her trav­els, she aban­dons her cau­tious and ef­fec­tive stride — it is too lim­it­ing. She glad­ly ac­cepts the risk of bumped knees or head and re­lies on fel­low parish­ioners to keep her from any real harm.

“Let the lit­tle chil­dren come to me, and do not hin­der them, for the king­dom of heav­en be­longs to such as these.”
– Matthew 19:14

I plan to fol­low her ex­am­ple in my posts these next few weeks. I will fa­vor won­der over re­straint and will like­ly bruise a knee or two.

Per­haps she is also a mod­el for our dioce­san pil­grim­age. We can let go a bit and rely on our en­thu­si­asm to car­ry us on an ad­ven­ture to dis­cov­er new and over­looked won­ders. We might risk the oc­ca­sion­al bump or bruise while re­ly­ing on each oth­er to avoid harm.