IX Children in God's Family

 We now turn to another group in God’s family—his children. As with the church in North Korea and the hungry in Chad, the criteria for these are the same. The children we will look at do not make the news, are not familiar to us, and are deemed unimportant. The standard measure of them tells us they are not worthy of any attention and have nothing to offer. But we will see God’s measure of children, how he values them and gives them a laureate position. 

 
Here are the primary features we learn of God’s love for his children:

1. Children are created in his image, each and every one. We share in the divine image. Yes, some come with disabilities, deformities, and other evidence of our fallen world; yet each child is created in the image of our Creator. We are, each one of us, sacred and inhabited by God. That truth assures us that worth, dignity, and value are indelibly stamped in us. As God’s creations, “he shows us the path of life, his presence fills us with joy, and he brings pleasures into our lives” (Psalm 16: 11). These gifts come to us by our Creator.
2. They are called “children.” They are not identified by age or by race or by territory. They do not live as autonomous beings. By definition, the term “children” tells them they are in relationship with others, specifically with mothers and fathers. Children have parents, and parents have children. God has put us in families, the first and most secure social institution on earth. 
3. God is their Father. He deliberately makes that statement for them. “Our Father, who are in heaven…” He is their true father. We do have earthly fathers, but they are imperfect. We must be careful not to let our image of Father build upon our earthly fathers.  It must be the other way round. God defines fatherhood. If we are affected by our earthly fathers, how much more shall we grow under the influence of our heavenly Father. As we consciously absorb the ways our wise and loving Father, we grow toward “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:23). 
4. God watches over his children. His eye is on them, and he fiercely protects each one. Knowing that his children are vulnerable, he knows that predators will inflict all forms of evil to destroy and dehumanize them. None of this goes on without God’s knowledge. He defends them, hears their cries, promises to be their father, sends angels to protect them, and does not want to lose one of them (Matthew 18:3, 10, 12, 14). His is the sweet and intense love of a shepherd for his sheep. “He will carry them gently in his arms (Isaiah 40:11). 
5. Children demonstrate the characteristics of life in the Kingdom of God. Jesus says so: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (Matthew 11:26). “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14). What does he have in mind? Certainly, a child’s trusting attitude towards parents, willingness to do what they say, obeying because that is best for the child. A child takes on the personality of father and mother. So a child watching the Father in heaven will grow in conformity to the image of the king of the kingdom, Jesus Christ.
6. God honors those who care for his children. We know how to notch up our worldly reputation, wealth, and security. Truth be told, for many grownups seeing the needs of children, they will pass by on the other side. After all, what item on a CV highlights time and funds given to children? How many offices encourage time to hear a child’s tearful complaint, to tie a kid’s shoes, to wait for the bus together? The behavior God wants is counter-intuitive to the ways of the world. In the economy of God’s kingdom, his honor descends on those who take this path: “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4).
7. Lastly, Jesus punishes their enemies. He addresses those who lead children astray, who enslave them, who sell them for perverse use. He will punish these predators. Using one of his strongest images, one that leaves nothing to the imagination, he invokes the scene of tying a millstone around their necks, throwing them into a deep lake, and drowning them (Matthew 18:6).

These are glances into God’s heart for his children, the apple of his eye. But in this imperfect world, grisly fates await many children. They end up on the street, fending for themselves; the very young end up in orphanages or institutions; the unborn die without a plea; the mentally impaired are discarded or pushed to the side; the impoverished sell children for food. 
 
But their protector neither slumbers nor sleeps. Next week I will highlight some of the countermeasures to poverty, abandonment, and the sinister ways of predators. It is a long trip back for these children, they and their friends know it. Through all their toil and discouragement and successes, the Father of the fatherless is caring for them (Psalm 68:5).  

VIII Messages Children Live By

 

Children thrive on positive reinforcement, strokes that lift, encourage, sustain, and feed their development. After all, they are sacred to God, created in his image, and dearly loved and protected by him, their heavenly Father. This certainty establishes their identity in secure places.    This article is about children who do not know positive reinforcement. They have lived in the absence of such love and esteem. They have been denied the nurture that affirms their dignity and worth.    These children are found in places that are out of the way to most of us, but the number sequestered in these habitations are in the millions. Because they are deprived of many basic needs, they hover in dark and remote places, unseen or unnoticed by the larger public.    Some live on the streets, displaying a resiliency and inventiveness beyond what most of us utilize. They know how to live, eat, and sleep, but amid shabby floors and shaky walls.  Others are disabled, either physically or mentally. They can be found in institutions or parked in front of the TV in their homes. Still others are by-products of wars. Their families have been killed or displaced, so they find whatever and whoever will take them in.  They may be in refugee camps or places of temporary refuge or just looking for shelter.    What gets reinforced is rejection. Sadly, they learn to accept the verdict that is passed down:  they don’t count. For some it brings a crushed will, for others anger, for most fear—fear of exploitation, of violence, and of abuse.   Their most significant deprivation is their childhood. They have no sense of belonging, of games and fun, of an identity in a healthy community. With the absence of socialization, they also miss education. I remember meeting a family of refugees in Athens who had left their homeland three years earlier. The children of the family were normal, healthy, bright kids, but they had not seen a classroom, a playground, a cafeteria in those three years. How do they make that up?    All of them live in a stinking environment. Evil seeds sprout and take over. The threat of exploitation looms large. And no wonder. Where is the protection, the law officials, the watchful eyes of neighbors who can deter and warn? Nowhere. The situations play out ominously in the forms of sexual abuse, trafficking, slavery, and child labor. Each of these has evil predators cruising the streets and habitations to lure the susceptible.   Thankfully, oases of hope and God’s mercy abound. A famous episode from a children’s show carries the foundational reinforcement: “I am somebody”:   https://www.youtube.com/?v=tu0lNcrZjG8   When this conviction fills the vision of the world, things change. Here is a sampling of these oases, ones that my wife and I have been privileged to know of or know well.   The ministry of Street Children United (https://www.streetchildunited.org) centers around sport to build their awareness of worth and value. Some of these street kids in India rose to challenge the official neglect of them. The laws there had denied registration for all street children. This denial prevented them from access to health, from recognized marriage and burial, and from opportunities for education. Street children leaders forced the upheaval of this injustice and brought about laws that affirmed their state identity.  They knew they were somebody.   Children with disabilities can face rejection at birth by being abandoned to die. Those who live face abject refusal in families and in society to grant them respect and worth. Asha Kiran is a Christian school for disabled children in Bangalore. (http://ashakiran.net) In fact, it is recognized as one of the best special needs schools in all of India. Happiness and excitement exude as soon as the kids get off the bus. Whatever love they miss at their homes is abundantly replaced by the staff and friends who greet them. They gather for worship with a short lesson and the Lord’s Prayer, which is said with gusto. Through games and exercises, with patience and understanding of the staff, the children laugh and play as they learn skills and enjoy friendships.   Some children are actually forced out of their homes. This can be by poverty or just because they are unwanted. Incredible but true. Help comes to them one at a time, and best with a network of various kinds of aid. The orphanage of New Hope for Peru (https://newhopeperu.org) has open doors for the abandoned, the abused, and the disabled. It is intended to be a temporary home in transition to permanent homes for the children. Relying on the support and prayers of friends, and the favor of the government agencies, New Hope speaks love, worth, and comfort to their children.    An innate characteristic of children is unconditional acceptance. Color, race, tribe, politics and all other segments of the world mean nothing to them—until, that is, they are taught to differentiate. That is why a school situated in the war zone in the Middle East has children of Kurds as well as children of those who fight against Kurds. Together, they are getting an education not available in their villages, while also developing friendships some would say ought not to happen. But they are learning to know the God and Father of Jesus Christ, himself a child born in that area.      In closing, our two questions: What can we offer them? Pushing beyond the news reports to bring into our vision the implications for children. That would be in Tigray, the streets of Beirut, the disabled of Delhi.   What can we learn from them? The foundation of our worth and value. The children of New Hope and Asha Kiran have nothing materially, but they do have a core at their center that keeps bubbling up hope and a smile.

VII Children in the Navity Story

 Christmas is nearly here. Most of your children are looking forward to stockings, maybe a pageant, and certainly toys. This article is about those children for whom all these are missing. These children are found in the Nativity narratives but are  overlooked. I will put our attention on them so we can see children outside the inn sleeping in the stable, children in the womb, and children in war zones .

1. Children outside the inn, sleeping the stable. 

We read that there was no room on the inn for the Holy Family. To be sure, part of the problem was that Bethlehem was teeming with visitors.  It is also likely that Joseph lacked the money that might have opened the door for a room. The Holy family was a family in poverty. 

Another detail of the nativity adds to the picture not just of poverty but also of insignificance. The first people to whom God revealed the birth of his Son were shepherds. They were minding their sheep--and not minding the carousing of Bethlehem. The population survey and tax applied to important people. Shepherds take care of sheep. No one expected them to register in Bethlehem. 

Mary and Joseph, surrounded by insignificance, lowered by their poverty to a level of inconsequential nobodies. Unnoticed, unseen, unimportant.

The very same words describe children in refugee camps for all their years of their childhood and schooling. The poverty of their parents moves some to sell them into slavery or prostitution. God’s other children are cold without warm clothing, sick without medicines, lonely without an auntie to hold them, fearful without an older sibling to comfort them.

Are they expendable? Are they so low and so without that for them to be eliminated would not matter? Are they so low that their existence will have no justification? Is there anywhere they can look to find some ray of hope that would reverse these verdicts? 

They are no lower than the one who left the full privileges of heaven; no lower than the Savior who was born without the warmth of a fire; no lower than the one who took up the form of a slave. 

These children found outside the inn resemble the only child who was begotten--Jesus Christ, the one born in a barn. And that is where they find their honor, their worth, their true identity, and the place where they belong—to the family that has God as their Father and Jesus Christ as their brother.

2. Children inside the womb.

The birth story begins before the birth of John the Baptist. When Mary, in early pregnancy, visited her cousin Elizabeth, John leaped in her womb. John in vitro recognized Jesus in vitro. The womb that held John held a child whom God made in his image. The womb that held Jesus held the full humanity of every human being ever conceived. Together they tell us of the miracle of who we are—created in the image of the creator of the world and redeemed to become like Jesus Christ.

Many children in their mothers' wombs face risks, but different from risks in refugee camps. In many countries, if the gender is wrong for a family, the child in the womb is aborted. In many countries, if a family is living in poverty, the unborn child is unwelcome. If a baby’s birth might interrupt a career or be an inconvenience to the family, the unborn child is in the way. The issue is cast as a health issue for the mother. The moral question is whether someone other than the mother can determine what is done to her body. To be fair, the question ought to be addressed to both the mother and the other living member whose life and well-being would be effected.

The Psalmist affirms that we are wonderfully and fearfully made. Genesis, in the first chapter, instructs us that each person is made in the image of God and is sacred before him. In the Ascension of Jesus Christ after his resurrection we see God's destiny of all humanity, opened for all his followers.   

3. Children living in war zones.

The Magi told Herod of the man born king of the Jews. Herod wasted no time in killing all the boys of Bethlehem, hoping to eliminate his rival. The Holy Family had retreated to Egypt to escape his death threats. On returning, once again they faced death threats from Herod’s brother, forcing them to settle in Nazareth.

Ever since then, children of other families have not escaped the evils of kings, politicians, and generals. Reports coming from war zones do not list the number of children killed, maimed, or left on the streets after a raid or a bomb. The  chapters that would follow them would cover starvation, abandonment, disfigurement, and slow death from wounds. 

COVID variants do not attack the very young—thank God!— but they are the ones left when parents die, when mothers work hours stacked upon hours, when they are sent to live with a relative. 

No, the world is not kind to children, those children without stockings and toys. But they are dear to their heavenly Father. He sees them and he loves them to the end. And he is especially eager to bless one more group of people, a group that takes us to the innkeeper.

4. The Innkeeper and all like her.

She was a woman, had to have been. A mother who immediately recognized the need of Mary, knew the equipment for a birth, held Mary’s hand, and gave her words of encouragement and joy.

We don’t know her name, which makes it easier for us to see in her all the workers, the staff, the employees, the helpers who love the children, hold them and sing to them, find them food and bandages, and shed tears when they die. They are out of sight and unnamed, but they are the ones who have washed the sheets of the beds, found food and distributed it, and pray with the parents. They are the ones who take time to play with the children when they show up not knowing what will come next.

These are the human angels who love like God loves, who honor the sanctity of his children, who sacrifice for their needs, and who hold each one dear and precious. May God make us more like them, more like him. 

VI Mission Omission Explained

 

Today, January 6th, highlights another group of God's children. The traditional day of the visit of the Magi reminds us of the Persian visitors to the Holy Family. They bring us Gentile children of God, people who have no knowledge of God, or his Son, or his transforming love.    The number of these individuals today is so staggering that they just slide by, omitted in most mission.   1,650,000,000 people on the globe today have not heard of Jesus Christ. They are not merely non-Christians. These have never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ. They represent about 27% of the world’s population.    Something puzzles me about them. If these many people don’t know about Jesus, wouldn’t we expect them to be a priority for our mission? Of course “mission statements” must cover deeper discipleship, new ways of evangelism, and strong teaching. But these represent next steps. The first step is to make sure people have heard. Making them a priority should be obvious. It puzzles me, this omission of 27%. I do not believe that leaders don’t care. I simply explain the omission as neglect.    But that neglect could have eternal disastrous results for the 1.6 billion people. I cannot say that not hearing the gospel destines them to hell, but I will say that hearing does improve their chances for heaven!   Let me illustrate this neglect by imagining the arrival of the Magi in two different circumstances—at the home of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, and at a symbolic gathering of the church today.    It is possible that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah were there at the time of the visit. If not, they certainly had spent many days and evenings together. The conversation of the four of them has not ever been duplicated. They pondered reports from the shepherds, recounting the appearance of the shekinah. They recalled the dreams of Matthew, the words of Gabriel to Mary.  Much to absorb.    Then came the knock on the door. They were strangers, and they were unexpected. Mary and Joseph had never seen the likes of them, clothing and language never heard or seen in Nazareth. But they were not hostile. Rather, they were eager to see the Child, to present him their gifts of lasting significance, and to bow in humble but joyful worship.    Mary and Joseph asked the Magi about their pilgrimage, so they heard about the curious beginning. There had been a rare star, but their astrological studies gave no hints about its meaning. Then came the unmistakable message: God had set this star in the heavens to guide them to where the king of the Jews would be born.    That they heard from Persia. From the Temple in Jerusalem they heard a broader message. Simeon prophesied that the rule of Jesus would not just be of the Jews but of all the Gentile nations. He would be a light to the nations. From their scriptures, Isaiah declared that the government of the world would be his, that he would rule with righteousness and justice, that he would be the world’s Prince of Peace.    Mary and Joseph met an enlarged vision of the Almighty, of his love and purpose, and of the role of the baby whom they now recognized as the Messiah. The shape was shadowy, the outline was elusive, but the direction was clear. This baby was to be the ruler of a world without boundaries, of all the nations of the world.    Now let’s transpose this visit from the home of Mary and Joseph to a representative gathering of Christ’s followers today.   The knock on the door has come. Those standing outside are not Persian astrologers but they are like them: people who do not have their own church and haven’t had means to hear the gospel.   Some may be refugees who have left violence, poverty, and destruction—Muslims leaving persecution, Syrians leaving destruction, Hindus leaving fear and poverty. Others are isolated ethnic groups stranded in their territory but living out the downward path under the evil rule of gods and dictators and perpetrators.    They are standing there, waiting for some response from us.    We listen and we do want them to know how we respect them. We can offer help alongside other agencies. Do they need housing? Documents? Food? But beyond that, well, this is not an easy fit. The language is so strange, their ways of thinking so unfamiliar. To introduce them to the Christian message, where would we start? And who is qualified to take this on? Besides, don’t they have their own religion?   In addition—and we do hope you will understand—we are in the midst of COVID.  We are having to deal with abrupt changes, with divisions within our gathering, figuring out inclusivity, and facing significant slides in attendance and income.    Really, our plate is full, our hands are tied. Just not a good time. We do respect you and do honor your ways and your faith walk. But this is not a good fit. We do hope you understand.     Meanwhile, of course, within the gathering, some sagacious heads make comments to the gathering that lift all this to a spiritual plane. Something perceptive about feelings of powerlessness, of meeting new perspectives, of disappointing others. A thoughtful transition, allowing us to move on.   With the omission of the Persians, without re-ordering priorities, accepting our barriers and challenges, of course our mission and vision are in place. Of course.      Over the next few weeks, I will present articles on the church in Iran: the church’s history, the church among the minorities, and what God is doing now. Many of God’s Other Children are finding open doors to the gospel. Painting at the top: