I saw God today.

I saw God today. I showed up at church with an eased mind. I wasn't going to do much in service today. Maybe read a scripture, do some announcements; it was going to be a real easy day at the office!

I check the bulletin, and whadaya know....I'm doing the children's sermon. Arrgggh! I was obviously confused during the meeting with my pastor the last week when he asked if I wanted to do the children's sermon. I thought that I said no, but I guess I didn't! And my pastor had this look on his face that said, "Seth, you were here when we went over this...."

So, here it is, 1 1/2 hours from service and I have to come up with something. I am going online, looking through all types of sermons and it hits me, why don't you just open the bible. It IS a pretty good resource.

I looked up the scripture for service and one of them was the story of Matthew becoming a disciple. The story (Matt 9:9-13) is when Jesus walked by this tax collector, Matthew, and said to him, "Follow me." The greatest thing about that story is not the fact that Matthew dropped what he was doing and gave his life to Christ, but that Jesus would offer it in the first place! He was a tax collector, aka- someone who made a living off of other people's misery. The Pharisees saw this and began asking his disciples why their "master" would hang out with such people. I imagined their faces bore the expressions like that of my preacher this morning and they were saying,

"Jesus, you were here when we went over this...."

Jesus automatically destroyed their sense of piety with a simple analogy:

"Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick.....I desire Mercy, not sacrifice."

What a cool lesson for not only children, but everyone!

That wasn't even the best part of my day. We don't have hardly any children in our church. But a couple with two adorable little girls have started to attend, Olivia and Jillian are the girls, and they came to the front. They are both under 5 and I am a big guy so they were nervous around me the first few Sundays they came to church. But today they were so happy to come down to the front! I said my little sermon and didn't think the little one Olivia had been paying attention at all...then it happened.

I asked if they were ready to pray and Olivia's head spun around and she looked at me with her pretty blue eyes and a big smile and said, "Yeah!" Like she was just waiting for me to shut up!

Shouldn't we ALL be that excited when we pray? Our preacher made a great point today. He said Jesus told us to let the little children come to him, do not hinder them! And why do we do this? Because they are naiive? Because they don't know any better? Oh no. Because they are vulnerable. They trust. They love. I really like that adjective vulnerable. We often think we have to be such strong people for God to "see" us. But it is when we are broken, needy, and vulnerable that we realize how much we need God to hold us together and He sees us who we are.

When Jesus saw Matthew, he saw a tax collector just like everyone else, but what was so cool about Jesus was that he saw the true nature of people not just the earthly label. THAT is the God I serve. Today was a good day.