For the Love of a Child

Many of you may be aware that I resigned from the pulpit for a time due to acute conflicts in my schedules between a full-time secular job, school at night, and my family. I felt that if there were to ever come a time when a pastor might be needed, I would not be able to give all that would be required. With a very heavy heart, I resigned.

This particular church I was honored to serve is filled with some of the most wonderful persons the Lord God put on this earth. They are just regular folks with good hearts and very hospitable souls. They were very good to my family and me, and I will always have a special place in my heart for them.

There was this one particular child who seemed to take quite awhile to warm up to me. She pretty much kept me at a distance even as she was quite the cut-up! She was two years old when I got there. The most endearing thing about this precious child was that she reminded me of the character, Boo, from the movie "Monsters, Inc". She even had dark hair that she sometimes wore in pigtails just like Boo. She was just beginning to really talk, and she had that muddled bunch of verbs and consonants that she was proud to use, and I'm also pretty sure she knew exactly what she was saying!

Well, she didn't much care for me calling her "Boo", so I started calling her "Fred" (her name is Sarah). She confronted me one day with hands on her hips, looking extremely exasperated, and finally said, "Pweachew, I guess I can live with 'Boo'; I don't like Fwed".

Her grandmother called me this evening although I had not yet made it home from work, so my daughter called me on my cell phone to relay a message. One was that grandmother had read an article I had published in the state's Methodist newspaper and was complimenting me on it, and the other was that "Boo" thought the new preacher who replaced me was ok but she was still wondering and waiting for my return.

There are the little things in our lives that make getting out of bed worth the effort, and this was one of them. When my daughter told me what "Boo" had said, I nearly had to pull off to the side of the road because my vision was suddenly and mysteriously blurred (it surely must have been a speck of dust!!).

It always feels good when folks give compliments about a particular sermon, but it is literally heaven on earth to be missed by a child.