This spring a mother robin built a nest on the railing of our front porch. Within two days, three little blue eggs appeared and less than two weeks after that, three tiny baby birds pecked their way out of the shells. 

They were hungry little beggars from the very first day. Whenever our front door opened, three little beaks opened wide as they stretched their little necks and screamed for food.

Although my girls were usually really good at not touching them, one day, four-year-old Hannah and her friend could not let them go hungry another minute. They fed dandelion stems to the baby birds. When I came out and found the birds chocking, I pulled the weeds out of their mouths.  Unfortunately, one of the babies did not survive.  The next day, only two birds were in the nest. They grew, and, about two weeks after hatching, flew away. 

Mark 10:13-16 tells the account of Jesus inviting young children to come to him after his disciples have tried to send them away.  Jesus told his disciples that the kingdom of God belong to “such as these”. 

Developing a child-like faith can be a challenge, partly because adults have forgotten what this kind of faith is like and partly because it is so blindly trusting.  The baby birds on my front porch were desperate to be fed and attended to. What a picture of how we should desire Christ. When is the last time you were desperate for God?

Children do not have reservations the way adults do when it comes to expressing themselves and asking for what they need. Being fully dependant doesn’t fill them with fear.  God wants us to feel that way about him.

The danger of this kind of faith is that there is no filter.  As adults we must learn to discern good teaching from false teaching. We also have the responsibility to watch out for our little ones and keep them from being filled with dandelion stems.

As we prepare for this year’s VBS we have the incredible opportunity to feed a church full of hungry little birds.  Let’s make sure the menu is full of truth that will stick with them long after they leave our building.  And as we watch these children soak up God’s truth, remember that their childlike faith is a lesson to you as well.

-Andrea Nell

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 7:14 AMand is filed under Devotional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.