{30 Days of Thanks~Day 17}

...let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such  belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.          

                                                                                                                                     Mark 10:14-15

I had this passage nailed to my forehead today by a precious little girl in one of my classes. I am currently preparing my students for our Annual Lessons and Carols Service, so we are learning our songs. At this point in the process, they know the notes and words and now we just need to"polish" them and make them beautiful. I KNOW this is the frustrating part to the singer---especially to my younger students because all they know is that Mrs. Nelson just keeps STOPPING THEM and telling them to DO IT AGAIN "THIS WAY"............only to stop them again. and then DO IT AGAIN....you get the picture.

So, I decided I would explain why I was doing this through the following illustration:

When my girls were little, they LOVED to play dress up. This was the 1990s and accessories were BIG---even in dress up clothes. At the time, there were these jewelry sets that you could purchase called "Jewel Rocks". They were necklaces, bracelets, tiaras, etc. that had these holes in them to hold big "jewels". The fun of these sets was that the "jewels" came in a bag and they looked like rocks when you poured them out on the table. You would take the "rocks" and put them in the "magic container", fill it with water and SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE! (go ahead and sing it---you know you want to)~

ANYWAY, after the shaking, you could look into your "magic container" and your rocks had become JEWELS!!!! EEEEEK! Now, imagine that you are a four year old girl---BIG EEEEEK!!! Then you could use your jewels to adorn your lovely jewelry.

I went on to explain, that our songs were a bit "messy" at the moment, like the rocks---we could perform them and everyone would be polite and think we were fine----BUT, I KNEW if we cleaned the songs up and "got all the gunk off" then we would REALLY be great. MORE than sounding good---we would make a beautiful offering to the LORD---because HE is the reason we get to celebrate Christmas! We chatted about this for a few minutes and then a beautiful, blonde-haired girl raised her hand and said this:

"That is exactly what Jesus does for us!"

OH MY GOODNESS---did that just come out of a  7 year old's mouth. So, I said, "Kharis, tell me what you mean" and she replied, "Jesus takes us and gets all the gunk off"----

HOW BEAUTIFUL IS THAT? 

I'm grateful today to be taught that simple truth again---that Jesus takes me in my "rock-y" state and makes me beautiful---WOW---thank you Father for using your youngest children to teach me a beautiful and timely lesson.

Be grateful~