Let me just begin this blog by saying that I married out of my league. Some people might say that I married out of my species, but those people are not my friends. But suffice it to say, my wife is a very beautiful woman. Because of my wife’s stunning good looks and her superhuman ability to overcome the genetics of my trollish features, I have also been blessed with beautiful children. Some people even say they look like me. Those people are wrong. I think. Unfortunately, aside from similar eye color and striking clefts in their chins, I really don’t see that much of a resemblance.

But I have noticed an interesting fact about my wife and I when it comes to the resemblance of our kids. People think our kids look like whichever of us happens to be holding them at the time. And I guess I can understand why that might happen. Because whether or not I see it, my kids do reflect characteristics of mine. My ears, my mouth, my pointed canines that make me look like an extra from one of the last Twilight movies. Sometimes, for good and for bad, people see a bit of me through my children.

And as I think about this, I realize that the same can said about our relationship with God. We, as His children, hopefully reflect God’s character to everyone in our lives. 1 John 2:29 says this, “If you know that He is righteous; you also know that everyone who practices righteousness has been fathered by Him.” Not that we have earned our salvation by our actions, but the opposite is actually true, that our actions are what they are because He has adopted us into His family.

The same cannot be said about the rest of the world. The bible tells us that unless we are redeemed by what Christ did for us on the cross, we still live in our sins. Romans 7:18 says this, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” The bible tells us that without Him even the little that the world might say about us that is “good” is only “filthy rags” in reality.

All other belief systems in the world operate on the idea that we need to work for our salvation. That is, that if we do enough good actions, if we have enough good thoughts, if we earn enough good karma, we can somehow tip the cosmic scale in our favor in terms of a relationship with God. But the Bible says that in truth, this is simply not how things work. It is impossible for us to even try to pay back the debt of our infinite sin because only Something infinitely perfect could fill that void needed to balance the scale. Only God Himself, in the person of Christ has the righteousness necessary to fit that missing piece. Which is why in Ephesians 2:8 we are told, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.-not by works, so that no one can boast.”

But isn’t this gift so much more wonderful than the endless “work” and the lack of certainty that the world has to offer? All God asks is that we rest in Christ’s hands. Let Him hold us and, in return, we get the privilege to reflect His character to the rest of the world. It’s a family resemblance that we cannot take credit for, but it is one that we get to enjoy for all of eternity. What a beautiful family indeed.     

_I’m not going to lie to you. I may have the ugliest Christmas tree of all time. Collected over the years, my wife and I have this bizarre amalgam of ornaments on our tree. We have ornaments with every cartoon character from the Disney family to the Warner Brothers. We have Batman, Captain America, and Spiderman, protecting our tree from any and all n’er-do-wells and evil-doers. Our tree proudly displays a Starbucks ornament, as well as several Furbees, a hideous alien creature that was the must-have gift a few years back when people clearly had too much money and too little discernment. We have the Three Stooges camping it up on our tree, making sure that our holiday season is filled with eye-pokes and belly-laughs. But quite possibly the most repulsive ornament is one that my wife has had since she was a child. It’s a little boy who is peering around the corner to spy on Santa while the back of his pajamas falls open to show off his rear. It’s a hideous tree is my point.
 
But did you know that the Christmas tree is, traditionally speaking, a symbol for the cross of Christ? No one knows for sure where the tradition started. Some say it was a symbol of the Garden where man and God walked together as friends. Others say that it is a symbol of the Tree of Life from Revelations. But most scholars believe that the Christmas tree was originally a symbol for what Christ did for us on Calvary. And if you think about it in those terms, my ugly tree makes a lot of sense.
 
On Calvary, Christ died for our sins. In the Bible, Romans 5:8 says this about it: “God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” At Christmas, we often take that lightly. We think about the adorable baby Jesus lying in a manger filled with fluffy-soft hay. We don’t think about the fact that only 33 short years later that adorable baby would breathe His last breath on a tree for our sins.
 
We often acknowledge at this time that Christ would die for our sins, but do we take the time to think about what that really means? Despite what some people say, sin is not a mistake, or an accidental blunder. Sin is a willful rebellion against the God of creation. It calls for the death of God. Because of this, God sent His Son, to be born as an adorable baby, to live a perfect life, and to die upon a cross.
 
But we also glance over the cross. Not only did Jesus die on that crooked tree, taking on all of the sins of the world, but He also took on the wrath for every single sin that the human race had committed, but would also EVER commit. As a result, for the first time in all of eternity, the relationship between the Father and His Son was severed. The Father could not be in the presence of the Sin that the son had become, a curse as the Bible says. That is what Jesus was referring to when He said, “Lord, why have you forsaken me?”
 
Needless to say, the cross was ugly. But because of the ugliness on the cross that Christ endured for us, we have the chance to see the beauty of His mercy for all of eternity. Through this one ugly event, God’s glorious character blazes forth brighter than a billion twinkling lights. Beauty out of ugliness.
 
And the same thing happens when I turn off the lights in my house and turn on our Christmas lights. My tree looks beautiful. With all of the lights shining out, it really is. Out of something repulsive, comes something gorgeous. It makes me think of the cross. And why, at Christmas, the gift of Christ is the most precious of all.

_ I teach Sunday School. I’ve taught Sunday School for going on ten years now. Because of the smaller size of my church I am often needed to fill in because of a lack of teachers. I sometimes watch enviously as the rest of the congregation walks in to service where the sermon will feed their spiritual needs. I am jealous that their brains and hearts will be strengthened while I’m “stuck” in the other room doling out Goldfish crackers and watered-down Kool-Aid. I am jealous, that is, until I open up the Bible and see what God says about children.

We all know the story from Mark 10:13, where Jesus was teaching and someone brought a group of children before Him that they wanted Him to bless. The disciples, being late to the party as usual, decided they needed to stop these grubby kids from getting their fudgey fingers all over their teacher. In one of the only examples of it in the Bible, we read that Jesus actually got angry at the disciples (indignant, it actually says), and afterwards he explains why.

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Now Jesus was obviously not saying that children are sinless, anyone who has seen what my kids can do with a crayon and an unguarded white wall in my home will testify to that. What Jesus was saying is that the characteristics of children are those that will be found in the residents of His Kingdom. True humility, a soft heart, looking to Him for their righteousness, these are the traits that most children naturally radiate to everyone around them.

Often as youth workers, we believe that we are the ones that are influencing the youth towards a Godly lifestyle, but Jesus seems to say that much of the time the reverse is actually going on.

I remember once when I was pulled out of service to cover for a teacher who was out sick. I was teaching on the Genesis flood and so I walked in and started going over the measurements for the Ark, so many rooms and levels, so many cubits long, so many cubits high (what on earth is a cubit, anyway?). I asked my nine-year old students why they thought God was SO specific about how the ark was to be built. In my teacherly wisdom, I already knew the answer, God needed the animals to survive the flood and so He knew exactly how it had to be built to keep them alive. One of my students, Chris, his red-headed bowl-cut gleaming from the back of the class, raised his hand. I asked him why he thought God was SO specific about the ark. Without batting an eye, this youth pierced my heart when he answered, “Because salvation is specific,” which, of course, was the right answer. Tears began to well in my eyes as the spiritual truth that this student had just revealed to me sunk in. Weeks later I heard one of the most popular pastors in the country give the exact same sermon about the Ark. I had already heard it from a nine-year old.

Youth workers not only get the privilege of serving our King, but if we keep our eyes and ears open, sometimes we get fed much more than the crackers and juice that we pass out to the kids. Sometimes we get the Truth. What a racket!

What are some things you've been taught from the mouths of children?