“And a little child shall lead them.”

                                                            Isaiah 11:6

I received an email recently from Allison, one of the teenagers in our Youth Group. 

First, she quoted this scripture from 2 Chronicles 7:13-14: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.”                                               

After that she referenced three things: the COVID-19 pandemic; last year’s wildfires in Australia because of lack of rain; and the recent plague of locusts in East Africa that are devouring the crops. 

She closed the email by asking me where she should look next.

 As I was stalling to answer her because I wasn’t sure what to tell her, I realized something.  It wasn’t about the locusts.  Wasn’t about the wildfires either.  Wasn’t even about the pandemic.  What I realized was that it took a young person to remind me . . . about the future. 

You see, for the last few weeks, we’ve all been living moment-to-moment.  We don’t have any idea what’s coming next.  We don’t know what new restrictions will be put in place or how soon.  We don’t know when the next time is that we’ll see our relatives or our friends.  So, it’s hard to plan.  No, make that impossible.

But in asking the question she did, Allison reminded me that if we believe with the trust and innocence of a child, if we’ll humble ourselves and bow down before God, then we know He’ll come through.  Do we know what that will look like?  No.  We can’t, because everything will be different, just as it’s been after every other disaster. 

But no matter what it looks like, we know that God will be there in the middle of it all, taking that enormous creative power He has used before, and using it again.  Allison never doubted that.  Her belief in that was inherent in asking the very question she did.  She never doubted God.  She just wanted to know what other parts of the Bible to read during this time.  And that’s because deep down she knows and trusts when God says that His Word is true, and that it holds every answer we’ll ever need.

I am humbled every time a child or youth asks me a question about the Bible.  It always makes my day.  I love to have questions from anyone about scripture, but when it’s a young person, it reminds me that God is raising up the next generation of leaders in the church, and from what I see, the church is going to be in very capable hands. 

Today it is my prayer that we will all have the faith of a child, and that we will humble ourselves before God.  When that happens, indeed we will find healing in our spirits.

Thanks Allison.    

“Father, Thank you for using Your children of all ages to remind us what it means to be a child of God.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”

Grace,

Rev. Dan