When I Was Just a Kid . . .

My friend, Crystal Miller, writes a nostalgic column on her blog site, Chat N’ Chew Café. Recently, Cris has written features on different writer friends, interviewing them about their childhood. The columns are called, “When I Was Just a Kid . . .”

Cris’ columns have become a stunning celebration of what God can do with the life of a child. As these people share what childhood was like for them, the reader gets a picture of an ordinary life sprinkled with memories we can identify with. Yet each of these people have become outstanding writers, parents and church leaders. Each have developed into men and women that stand in the gap for the cause of Christ, believers who have not been hesitant to proclaim their faith. I know some of these men and women personally and I know life has not always been kind to them, yet they are strong because they have experienced God’s grace and mercy.

I wonder - when they were children, did their parents look at them and ever imagine what they would become? I look at my own children, now teenage ladies, as one friend calls them. I am astounded and astonished at what capable women they are becoming. I still can’t figure out where my oldest daughter got her science genes from or why my younger daughter, now 17, is sometimes a better proofreader than I am! I am humbled when I hear them stir before my alarm goes off so they can have their time alone with God.

I look at the children in my classroom, the boy who thinks he’s no good, the girl who has one father and three step-fathers, another girl who is so shy she speaks with a whisper, the teenage boy who is socially awkward, yet when he finally opens his mouth to talk in Sunday School, pearls of great price fall from his lips with profound explanations for God’s Word that I had not yet thought of.

These children are becoming too. They will grow into beautiful men and women for God, people God will also use to further His Kingdom. I don’t know what God has planned for them, but God does. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,” says 1 Corinthian 2:9. I am content, knowing that God’s kingdom will continue to grow because of what He is doing in the lives of these children.