...like this child

Matthew 18: 3-5

3And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me."

Throughout life there are always any number of problems to solve and profound thoughts to be pondered. In the midst of it all I strive and struggle not to forget simplicity.It's easy to lose the ability to see life through the eyes of a child if we don't continue to hone those skills. I think this inability is as disabling in life as any other ability I have lost with age (or have never gotten around to trying at all).

I recently came across some poems which my mom has been saving. I loved them as a child. "My Shadow" which I'm including below was one of my favorites. I didn't know of Robert Louis Stevenson or his impressive list of literary accomplishments. I only knew that I enjoyed the words. I loved sitting next to my mother as she read and reread the children's books and poems to me. As I read over the poems I was transported to a simpler time and that familiar feeling stirred in me.

Whatever our work or our ministry we hope that it will make a difference. As a writer I hope that my words will touch lives. As a Christian I hope that I will do all things to His Glory. When I wrote my first "books" as a youngster, I simply wanted to tell a story. Story told...mission accomplished. It occurred to me that when my work on earth is weighed on the Kingdom scales it will not be the quantity that tips them one way or the other. It won't matter how many copies I've sold or how many articles I'll have had published. Nor am I convinced that it will be the relative quality. The real weight will be in the love, faith, and obedience involved in the work. With those things factored into my writing, the words will have no choice but to be effective in what ever way God determines.

My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make of fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleep head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.