Shining Some Jesus Light

After attending a church leadership training session on a Saturday, I had been pondering, “What do I really want? What’s my personal mission statement?” On the way to pick up two of my great-grandkids for church the next day, I came up with, “To be a light to my kids so that they can know Jesus.”

After church—after asking Pastor Brad if we could get gumballs out of his office, and getting gumballs out of the machine in Pastor Brad’s office, and Kyrie and friend Noah explaining how the gumball machine works—and getting the boots on, and taking the boots off to put the socks on, and then putting the boots on and then the coats and getting in the car and doing up the seat belts—we were finally on our way to the Burger King by Addy’s house—not the one by the McDonald’s but the one by Addy’s house—for lunch.

I seldom drive on the expressway with the kids, too many distractions, but I decided to make an exception since it had taken us so long to get into the car in the first place, and Addy had a birthday party to go to later in the day. As we were passing the church, Addy asked if it was her church. I told her it was and asked what she had learned in her Kids’ Cove small group that day.

She said, “We sang This Little Light of Mine. Can we sing it now?” So we did, with Kyrie correcting us along the way.

After we finished, I asked the kids if they knew what the song meant. They didn’t so I explained that when we have Jesus inside of us, he shines like a light so that others can see him in us.

Addy then asked if you could see Jesus inside of you and wondered, “If you went to the doctor so he could look at your skeleton, would Jesus show up in the picture?”

Trying not to chuckle, I said I didn’t know.

Addy emphatically responded, “I’ll ask Pastor Brad. He’ll know for sure.” Then she asked a crucial question. “How do you get Jesus inside of you?”

Using the language that we use in our children’s ministry, I explained that it was as simple as asking him to be your forever friend and coming to live in your heart.

“How do you do that, Grandma?”

“By simply praying a prayer,” I replied.

“Hey, Kyrie, we should do that! Do you want to do that, Kyrie? Grandma, can we do that?”

So while barreling down the expressway at 100 km per hour, with Addy’s little head bowed and her hands folded in prayer in the backseat, we prayed that simple prayer with Addy repeating the words as I said them.

Kyrie chimed in with a hearty “Amen … hey, that’s where Uncle Rob works, can we sing The Muffin Man?”

And so the crucial conversation and simple prayer were followed by Do You Know the Muffin Man? And we went to lunch at Burger King—the one by Addy’s house, not the one by McDonald’s but the one by Addy’s house.