“Don’t go outside it’s dark,” she cautioned as my nephew attempted to open the back door.
Our littlest loves visiting her cousins. There she is not the smallest being lead around, but the one able to lead. She gets to be the big kid and deliver a fair share of instructions and discourse to those who look up to her. It is entertaining to eavesdrop on these conversations, to hear what kind of message she is sharing and the storied world she is orchestrating.
What I love about Christmas is the way children take center stage in the plot line and pageantry. They are given agency to tell the gospel story in sacred spaces that more often than not convey a message that church and related rituals are mostly for grownups. We even typically dismiss them before the most holy parts of our liturgies and practices of the sacraments. But at Christmas, as the prophet Isaiah proclaims, the little children lead us (Isaiah 11).
My prayer is that we would consider the many messages we can hear from these same children beyond year-end and for the sake of social media pics. My prayer is for all children to feel fully a part of God’s unfolding drama of love and justice every day. And when we as adults find ourselves lost in our ability to be kind to one another, eavesdrop on the imaginations of children at play. They just may be able to lead the way.