Sometimes I babysit Liesl and Paul’s little girl
Alexis. She is not yet two. In a odd way, I find that she is my teacher
when she comes to my house. That may
sound strange but Alexis sees the world.
I mean, she really sees it. With
absolute fascination, she will look at the clock in my house, point to it on
the wall and say the word CLOCK! And it
will hit me like a ton of bricks that yes, this is a clock and it is a
wonderful thing and fascinating and why did I not notice it? In fact, now that I am an adult, I pass by so
much without seeing it. I pass by entire days, sunsets, flowers, rain…not even
noticing.
This past week, my son Luke and I took Alexis for a
walk on one of her visits. It was
getting dark and she kept pointing out the moon and shouting at it, “Moon!!” Then we reached a small puddle at the end of
a driveway. And she was intrigued.
Knowing that a washer and drier were not far away, I
let her stomp in the puddle.
SPLASH! I said, and she giggled
loudly. SPLASH! She sang out. And splash and splash and then run faster and
faster and come back and splash again.
Alexis was fascinated with how the water worked, how it moved around her
feet, how there were leaves in it. (yes, we did wash our hands afterwards) She
did not want to leave. She was not done
exploring that puddle for a very long time. I could not rush her. She moved and
jumped in that tiny amount of water. It
was a song of praise. It was a dance. It was pure joy.
There was another little boy who would not be rushed. Today
we hear about the boy Jesus. He was just twelve years old when he went to
Jerusalem with his parents. They visited
the temple annually. But this time, Jesus did not leave when everyone else
left. The adults all thought that Jesus was lost, but he was not lost, he just
never left the temple. He was not done with what he had to do there. Jesus did
not wander off. It was everyone else who
wandered off without him. He was exactly
where he should be.
Jesus was in God’s house, where else? And that to me
is no surprise at all. Jesus felt safe
and fascinated by the beautiful space just as you and I do. Isn’t that why we are here? Jesus was drawn into God’s presence even as
he was God himself.
Remember that God tells us again and again that this
is the place to be. If you encounter
someone who is lost or lonely or suffering, invite them here! It is so simple but we forget. They can say no. You are not going to offend them. Just invite
them. After all, Jesus wanted to be here
too.
It took his parents an entire day to realize that he
had not left Jerusalem with the group from their village. I can’t imagine how
frantic they were when they went back to look for him. I have felt that panic before, the rising
sense of danger as your child is lost.
When they find Jesus, they are no doubt frazzled and
rushed and angry and afraid. They felt
like most of us do on many of our days.
Sort of self-pitying and afraid. We
often rush at God will all of our urgent problems as if God has abandoned us
when we actually left God somewhere along the way. We say, “How could you do this to me? Don’t you know how much I have been
worrying? How could you be so
thoughtless? How can you leave me?”
It is not where he was that surprises me, it is what
he was doing. For years, I glossed over
this passage and assumed that Jesus was arguing with the teachers and rabbis
and telling them about God. I assumed that Jesus would show them how he knew
more about God than they did. I was wrong.
Jesus was not telling them anything. Jesus was listening.
And Jesus was asking questions.
It blows my mind that the Son of God would be
listening and asking questions. But
somehow, the child Jesus knew something that most of us grown-ups seem to have
forgotten…that God is in the questions.
God is in the wonder and the amazement and the awareness. If we want to find God, we have to stop
talking for a minute and listen.
In this world, it seems that we are bombarded by
talking. Everyone knows what they think
and everyone has an opinion. But we do
not learn from talking at each other. We
do not learn when we pigeonhole another person as liberal or conservative and
stop listening. No one human being is exactly like another. We no more understand each other than we can
understand the moon. When we stop listening,
we cut off the very means by which God communicates with us.
Jesus listened and Jesus asked questions.
Recently, I have begun to picture an image in my
prayers. It is an image of glass. Each
of us is surrounded by a lens of sorts, a piece of glass or a bubble of our
perception. When we encounter events in
life, they color or warp the glass. When
a girl is abused by her father and touched inappropriately, her lens becomes
warped. She sees all men as dangerous
and even the sweetest man will step in front of her and his actions will look
warped to her through her lens. She will not be able to see him clearly or to
love clearly.
It is not only traumatic events that warp the glass,
it is simple opinions. Telling a child
that teenagers are rude or old people are bad drivers or that Republicans are
mean or Democrats are stupid. They believe us and it colors their perception.
And if they don’t clean the glass, forever will their world be warped.
And finally, the worst kind of warped perception is
when we don’t try to look through the glass at all because we are simply too
busy looking at ourselves. Or when the
glass becomes so dirty, so covered over with opinions and arguments that we
can’t see through it at all, all we see is a reflection of our own selves. It
is amazing how fascinated we can be with our own moods and actions meanwhile
the true awe exists all around us waiting to be seen.
We all see through a glass dimly, wrote St. Paul so
many years ago. The point of prayer is
not so much to talk as to listen, to ask questions and to clean the glass of
your perception.
Remember the children.
Remember the child Jesus who listened.
Return to who God created you to be, a child of God.
