Thread by @BethMooreLPM

Luke 18:15-16 “People were bringing infants to Him so he might touch them but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. Jesus, however, invited them: Let the little children come to me & don’t stop them because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

“Don’t stop them”

This story is my earliest memory certainly in church but maybe in life. Couldn’t have been more than 3. Tiny baby bear chairs in a circle. My Sunday school teacher crouched in one also. I can still remember her heels. Navy pumps that click click clicked, scuffing the linoleum.

She held up a color poster of Jesus with kids crawling all over Him. It didn’t show how they stepped all over His robe filthy footed but you know they did. Didn’t show them tugging at his beard but you know they did. And Jesus, grinning ear to ear. She said He loved little kids.

I believed her. I had reasons to think that a big man touching little children was the most utterly UNsafe situation in the entire world. I still can’t explain why, amid close-up religious hypocrisy, I believed Jesus was different but I did. And He was and He is. It is imperative

that Christ’s church in every stream, every tradition, goes the full length to provide a safe place for children so they can know that Jesus who loves the little children can actually be trusted with little children. So they can grow up to love Him, hearts touched by His Spirit.

I don’t believe there’s a sin more grievous than hindering children from loving & trusting Jesus.We can have kids’ programs at our churches bursting at the seams but if kids aren’t safe, not only do they bear the agony of victimization. They can grow up thinking Jesus is abusive.

Woe to us, church, if we don’t get this right. We live in an evil, broken world and we will never completely stamp out child abuse but we can dang well do everything we can to protect our churches from it. And we must.

“Let the little children come to Me and do NOT stop them.”