Last month I received an anguished text on Sunday morning from our church’s nursery coordinator asking if either my wife or I could cover the nursery, there apparently being no one else available. Since my wife was busy setting up with the worship team and I was about to start my duties as Greeter, I had to decide quickly. The fact that they wanted to entrust this responsibility to a childless couple with minimal child-minding experience underscored the desperation. Outside of watching our eight-year-old niece for a few hours one evening with my wife, I have no experience of working with children, certainly not infants and toddlers.
So what could possibly qualify me for this task? According to Woody Allen, eighty percent of life is “just showing up.” And that was my qualification– I was available.
God seems to place a premium this. As Moses runs through his reasons why God should not send him to free the children of Israel, God cuts him off: “What’s that in your hand?” He doesn’t ask Moses to procure some special item to demonstrate God’s power and God’s favor, He takes what is there and sanctifies it.
When feeding the five thousand, Jesus turns to the disciples and throws the responsibility back on them. What food did they have on end. None, as it turns out. A monumental failure on the part of the disciples who are supposed to be serving their master. Jesus ends up using somebody else’s lunch, the only person there who had thought to bring food (his mother probably packed it.) out of that vast throng of people. Amazingly, the little boy let Jesus take his lunch, and became a vital part of the miracle that followed.
God uses the strangest means to achieve His ends. A band of lepers, a throng of children, Caesar’s desire for domination in Germany, a group of frightened women, the muddy river Jordan, a jar of oil, and of course one lowly ass. Even the very stones will cry out the Praises of God should the occasion warrant it. Goliath must have thought the Israelites had lost their minds when a boy finally stepped out before their battle line to answer his challenge. But David was there, and he was willing.
“For consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the insignificant things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no human may boast before God.”
I Corinthians 1:26-29 (NASB)
I am pleased to report that no child was harmed during my time in the nursery. They may not have learned the assigned Bible story, and they no doubt would have benefitted greatly from a teacher more graced and gifted in the world of toddlers. But that teacher wasn’t there. God had to make do with me instead, to the praise and glory of His name.
Letters From a Far Country 