Hide and Seek and Gummi Fish

This is Mimi.  She's making a fishy-face for our Vacation Bible School "Rocky-Point Lighthouse."  Normally she pretends to be pretty shy when she's at church, but she loosened up at VBS.


Last year in May I was blogging about Mimi's tendency to call me "Jesus" and how I was kind of awed by that, wondering how I could fill those shoes.  This year I think Jesus and I are in a better place with our relationship:


While the other kids were playing kickball in the field, Mimi came up to me, put her little hand in mine and said, "Come on, Jesus, let's play hide and seek!"  I smiled a big smile, and next thing you know I was counting to ten by a big tree while she was running off in delight to hide behind another tree in the yard.  (Pretty soon there were about a half-dozen other giggling kids hiding while I was counting and seeking them - behind the trees, in the trees, behind the shrubs.)  But when Mimi said this to me, my immediate thought was, "Wouldn't Jesus love it when a child comes up to him and just simply says, 'come on, Jesus, let's play hide and seek!'  I bet he'd be smiling from ear to ear while he finds a tree to count by."


Later, during snack time, Mimi gave me a couple of her gummi fish.  This was a big deal for her and me, because it was the first time she spontaneously shared anything with me.  Cool, I thought.  These are yummy gummies.  But later, when our Director was asking the kids during one of the program segments if they had done anything to "Shine God's Light" with somebody else that day, Mimi said "I shared my gummi fish with Jesus."  Again, a huge smile on my face as I thought, "Wouldn't Jesus be delighted with a child who shares her gummi fish with him?"  In fact, we jump so quickly to the miracle of dividing a few small fish and some loaves of bread among five thousand people - but what if the part that the adults leave out of the narrative is the smile and the joy of Jesus that the child would share their (gummi) fish with him?


And what if Jesus is just waiting for you (or me) to come up to Him and say "come on, Jesus, let's play hide and seek!" or "Here, Jesus, have some of my gummi fish"?  Nothing more - but nothing less!  - than that.  What if?


Of such is the Kingdom of God.