The Little Ones

Family. I realize that not everyone is stoked about their family, so if you are having a tough time with yours, you'll have to excuse me for a second. I really love mine. I realize how fortunate I am to be able to say that...how so many others wish that they felt the same way. I don't take it for granted.

As I write this, my beautiful little niece Maci is drawing me a picture and explaining to me that 'alphabet letters' are on there, but you just can't see 'em. Her cousins Zach and Levi are knocking on the sliding-glass door, covered in mud, needing help shedding their soaking-wet clothes so they won't turn the kitchen into a water feature when they come inside. This post will probably take all day to write - but I couldn't care less! The place is chaos, but these little mini-nuclear reactors are my family, and being with them is the happiest place on earth.

My side of the family decided that there wasn't enough insanity in the month of December, so we had to extend it into January for a 'belated' Christmas celebration. This is about the forty-seventh holiday-related event that we've attended this season...but thankfully this one is taking place at someone else's house! My brother actually has the perfect house for it. Room for everyone and enough space to test out the new bicycles, tricycles, wagons, etc. that were found under the tree this Christmas. At least once an hour someone is falling off a wagon or hitting a wall head-first, adding to the general state of emergency. Little Gwen, my sister's youngest is usually directing the traffic and Max, my brother's youngest is blowing them all off for Baby Einstein.

Having no kids myself, you would think that all of this would wear me out...but the truth is that I am probably the biggest kid of them all. I soak in the chaos and do my best to add to it! Not only do I relish having two or three of my favorite little people on the planet climbing on me at once, but I truly find a sick pleasure in getting them fired up and handing them back to my siblings. Unfortunately, the effect is sort of nullified by the fact that my brother and sister are as crazy as everyone else around here and find the whole maelstrom of miniature humanity as humorous as I do.

We live in interesting times, to say the least. Our nation...our world...seems to converging on a crossroads and the uncertainty of what is next is weighing heavily in the air everywhere you go. I've noticed the pressure getting to a lot of my friends. Tempers are flaring up quicker and frustrations are being expressed more openly. As I sit here surrounded by the little lives that will be affected by the decisions made by our generation, I am reminded of just how critical it is that we remain clear-headed...of just how much they need us right now. Whether we realize it or not, we are shaping the world of their future. There is a lot of doom-saying going on right now, some of it worth a second though and some of it just plain idiotic. But we owe it to these little ones to press in and try to make sense of a crazy world. We need to try our hardest to set them up for success.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I truly believe in our Creator. That means that I truly believe that nothing is impossible when He is involved. I believe that He is not finished with our country or our world quite yet...as some are implying. I believe that to Him, the left and the right, the liberal and the conservative, the red and the blue...all of it...to Him it's all just jargon. He cares about people. He doesn't love you any more or less if you believe in Him or if you don't. He really doesn't give a rip about our politics, our opinions, our social experiments. He created the cosmos and then transformed Himself into a helpless baby human, lived a life amongst us and died for us, all for one reason. He loves us. Every single one of us. He loves my niece Maci as much as He loves the inmate on death row as much as he loves the monk in the Buddhist monastery in Tibet as much as He loves me. And that kind of love is not ready to throw in the towel.

The interesting thing about our Creator is that while He has infinite power and could sweep in an 'fix' everything in an instant, He doesn't. He chooses to use us...people. We are His hands, His feet, His voice. He is not going to 'change the world' unless we are willing to get on board and help with the dirty work. If you are feeling a bit lazy and thinking of letting someone else pull your weight in all of this, just look around you. Look at your family. Even if you are from a broken, hurting family, there is bound to be at least one little one who is innocent of being involved in any of the hurts life has dealt to you. At least one Zach or Levi or Maci or Gwenneth or Max who is counting on you to leave them with a future that is bright. I truly believe that we can address the problems of our generation. I also believe that we cannot do it without the help of our Creator. So, this is a message of hope and a message of warning. All is not lost...for the sake of our little ones, all cannot be lost. But if we think for a second that we can 'make everything better' without the help of the One who put it all here in the first place, we are fools. Fortunately, He loves our children even more than we do and wants to help. All we have to do is ask. And then act.


P.S. - I will probably come back often to this theme. I realize that I have eluded to issues in general and have only scratched the surface of what I see happening in our world and of possible solutions to some of the problems. I purposely do not want to get political in my blogging. So, from time to time, as my heart leads me, I will probably just address social issues in general and how they relate to what our Creator wants to do in our lives.