Thinking about the children.

Today my grandson will undergo minor surgery. My daughter in love will soon give birth to a new baby girl. I love the children. This past weekend I saw all my grandchildren. I was truly grandfathered in! I can not imagine life without them!

Matthew 19:14 but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

About a week ago I had a vision about a child. A child from somewhere deep in Mexico. I will share that in a moment.

Yesterday I was in contact with a organization that I am hoping I can work with, that they will be able to do something on the Mexican border. All of these children. Just a few short days ago one was found dead. Sickness and disease are rampant. This is not about the politics, but truly about the people. Little people.

I have been intensely burdened with the idea of children. I find myself crying over the little ones lately.

This past weekend I had an unusual experience. First, I got to see all my grandchildren and my children. And while at our church fellowship, The Village Church, we prayed over a few babies. Then I felt that I was to pray for grandparents. I asked all the grandparents to raise their hands that I could pray for them. Honestly, it seemed like it was half of the room. It was a few moments later that the children headed out to nursery and children’s church. That seemed like it was the other half!

Children. Lots of them.

Yesterday I met with a man who has 5 kids and only sees one of them. As much as I like him I struggle with it. I know he blames it on the other, but I have been around long enough to question those things. I struggle with fathers and mothers who put their individual lives and agendas before the children. Period. I am not going to belabor it. Just ask you to think! A lot before you start making bad decisions.

I also met with a young man who has son who is very sick. Deathly sick actually. And I think about the child. I offered to pray for him and his son.

I began to think about how much the kids have value. And yesterday they voted in the Supreme Court about the Hobby Lobby case and it’s contention that the parts of the Affordable Healthcare act ought to not be covered because it required a privately owned company to participate in abortion which was against their religious beliefs.

Children…

Many years ago I had a number of stores and a lot of my pieces came from other countries. One of the stores carried rocks and minerals. Beautiful stones and colors. Many people died in the “arsenic process” of making colored agates and geodes. Others died in the harvesting of minerals. And then one day one of my friends came in and tossed a magazine with a picture of a man who was shot for swallowing rubies to smuggle them out. As I looked at his body laying beside the river bank I was gripped with the senselessness of it all.

I went through a lot of thinking. Children were mining the “arsenic” products. Children were making the carvings that came from Bali. In that same time period, I had just gone through preventing my wife at the time from aborting my son. My mind began to move to a new place.

A vision had played out in my head before the weekend. I never got around to processing it. But in the whole vision I saw a young farmer and his wife with a sickly, starving child. They appeared to be in the depths of Mexico. I found myself crying as the vision played out. I watched the parents reading the sign that told of place that was safe, that would be healthy.

I thought about the year in the hospital with my daughter. I thought how much pain I carried. How much change I incurred.

As the vision shimmered before me, I thought about the children who were set to be destroyed by Pharaoh and a deliverer named Moses was amongst them. I thought about children that Herod destroyed. I thought about a dream I had last year of a little girl in Darfur, where she and so many women had been raped and tortured. As evil men came towards the village she gripped my hand. Children. How many deliverers were out there? How many leaders were being shaped?

These parents in my vision traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to get there child to some place safe. They crossed the border and entered the USA. They wanted the best for their child.

Today, I am in prayer. I know that I will not be with my grandson while he goes through surgery. I think back to all my times with my kids in the hospital. Long before I found Jesus, I spent too much time in hospitals with children. I watched children die and I watched them live. I sat there while parents wept outside hospital rooms and watched brave little children tell others to “be strong”.

I believe in the power of grace to shape and to form a church that carries compassion and understanding. To grow men and women who will meet circumstances with love and with grace. I see that we are at a crossroads. Some have turned left, some have turned right. But many are those who have begun to move ahead, to see the fullness of God in all that is life.

Here in the US we are teetering over the edge of a river named “goodness”. Too many are the detractors for they shall soon enter. His goodness and mercy are forever chasing after them. I do not need Facebook and its social experiment to reveal that negativity is easier, that their appears to be a predilection to it, but where positivity is in appearance, less negative words appear! Goodness is slowly but surely streaming into our country.

Like water overflowing its banks the goodness of God is touching places previously untouched. The result is that there is a deliverer being released and His name is Jesus. Just as Moses came out of the waters to one day be a deliverer of men, so did Jesus come out of the waters of the river Jordan to free mankind.

This river of goodness is flowing into places previously not touched. Hearts are being changed. Lives being shaped.

There is another “Supreme Court” that agreed with the law of Life and Liberty. It is sweeping nations.

And the children? I am determined to do what I can to see respite and peace come to their lives.