ONE MINUTE WITH MARLIN
Every Evening Adelaide, Bennett, and I have the same routine. After baths are done, teeth are brushed, and the many “night night love you’s” are shared between the five of us, we begin. The doll babies are put to bed and tucked in their warm blankets. We find the tattered and coverless pictorial children’s Bible, I read a story, we take turns saying a prayer, and then end our routine by taking turns singing “Jesus loves me.” But in between, something wonderful happens. After I have read the story of the evening, Addie and Bennie compete for the Bible in order to “read a story to me!” And what “reading a story” consists of for them is scouring the Bible from front to back and finding the pages with photos of Jesus. Invariably, I am saying the words, “That’s Abraham” or “That’s not Jesus either, that is David. Jesus is in the back half of the Bible.” In their Bible, Jesus is always wearing the same white and red clothes, and the squeals of delight when the kids find Him are unlike anything else.
When we are sitting together, I often wonder how much they comprehend what we are reading and talking about. They may never understand the human condition and how sin has destroyed much of what God originally created, but there is something inside our little boogers that draws them to Jesus. I think this is much more of a question being tossed into the air than a statement or an observation. I don’t have an answer, but watching and hearing little children come to our Lord with a level of innocence and purity only those with Down syndrome can have is a blessing all its own. In Matthew 19:14, Jesus says, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Many times, I make life harder than it is. Maybe you can relate. I hope that tonight, when you and I sit with our families thinking and talking over the last day, we can search for Jesus hidden in the pages of our lives.
As always, may you find joy in the simple things.
Marlin
Plain Values Publisher
