Peers

I enjoy hearing Little Guy tell me about the other children in nursery.  We talk before and after nursery about who he will play with or who he did play with, and we role play greeting his friends and how to share.

He really likes one of the older girls who is only in the nursery on Wednesday nights.  (She has aged out of Sunday morning nursery, and is in Sunday School, but on Wednesday night, she is too young for Awana, so is in nursery while her parents serve in Awana.)  They call out each other's names whenever they see each other from way down the hallway.

He talks about E and R and A and the other R and O and L and W and on and on.

He always asks if I'm going to stay in nursery and is worried that I won't.  When I do, he sticks close to me, because he knows I'll only be there for the first half of the morning.

Recently when I had the privilege of serving in the nursery, it was a slow week, with only six toddlers there during the hour that I was there.  While I was changing a diaper, and reminded (by the stickers hanging on a clipboard nearby, stickers that say, "I was changed and prayed for today") to pray for the little girl whose diaper I was changing, I started thinking about her story.

Then I looked around the room.  Of the six toddlers in that room, one was adopted internationally, one was adopted domestically, and one has been fostered since birth by a family in our church.  And my heart was full, as I thought of their experiences (at such a young age ... and for the rest of their life) of loss and grief, and I thought of the picture that their life already is and has the potential to be of putting the gospel on display. 

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4.4~5)