This the power of the cross...

September has flown by. The air now has a crisp to it, the leaves are brilliantly changing, and the days are getting shorter one by one. Josh and I are staying busy between his work in the welcome center and the dorm, my work at Kiddie Kampus, ministries at church, and so forth. We're enjoying life though. It's great to be married to the one God planned for you and to be living a life together led by Him!

Now onto what the title of this post hints to...

All week at Kiddie Kampus I have been teaching the Bible lessons. The lessons for the week have all had a theme of prayer. Monday was about Jonah praying in the whale to confess his sins, yesterday was about Nehemiah praying for help to rebuild the wall, and today was about how Jesus prayed for Himself and others. So I'm going through the story and the kids are listening (most of them anyways!) and one thoughtful question that was asked was, "Why did Jesus have to pray when He is the one we pray to?" What a thought for a 3 year old, eh? Then we get to one of the flashcards from the story that shows a picture of Jesus and above him are three thought bubble type things with pictures in each. One had a picture of the disciples, one had a picture of people of today, and one had a picture of Jesus hanging on the cross. They were each picturing times when Jesus prayed or things He prayed for. We get through the lesson and after Bible time is snack time so half of the kids are sent to go wash the hands in preparation for snack. While the kids are back washing their hands I look through the flashcard pictures from the story once again with some of the remaining kids. As we are looking one boy asks if we can go back and look at the picture of the cross. So we look at that picture and this little boy is enthralled with this picture. He asked, "Why is he on that cross? Why is there blood on him? Why doesn't he have clothes on? Why are those nails in him?" I proceeded to answer his questions as simply and lovingly as I could. I explained to him that Jesus had to die on the cross so that we could go to Heaven one day and be with Him and how the people took his clothes from Him and the nails were there to hold Him up on the cross and He bled because it hurt a lot. He continued to stare at the picture of Jesus on the cross and I could just see the emotion and questions flowing across his face. Well the time then came for the rest of the kids to go wash their hands and I headed back to the sink with them all. Back at the sink this little boy was still thinking about the cross picture. He said, "I don't want to go on a cross like that." To which I replied that we don't have to go on a cross because Jesus did it for us. After thinking about that for a moment he asked, "So how do we get up to Heaven?" I first replied by saying how we have to tell Jesus we are sorry for the bad things we have done and we have to believe on Him. To which He interrupted me by asking, "How do we GET up there?" I told him Jesus will come back and bring us up through the clouds. He thought about that for a minute and replied, "Ok, but I'm scared to do that." I said it won't be scary because we will be with Jesus. With simple trust he said, "Okay."

That right there is why I love my job. I truly pray that this little 3 year old boy will continue to have questions and a desire to know about the cross.

"This, the pow'r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross."