HeartFelt Kids Bible

Wherever Jesus went there were people waiting. They came with questions and they came with worries, and they brought anyone in the family who was poorly, and they stood in the road until he got there. It was busy and it was noisy and it went on all day long.

One day some mothers and fathers joined the crowd, and they had their children with them, the little ones holding on to their hands and the babies up on their shoulders. They were not asking for anything much. They only wanted Jesus to put his hand on their children and bless them.

Jesus' friends stepped in front of them. He is far too busy for this, they said. He has been talking all day and there are important people waiting. Go home. And they began turning the families back down the road, away from him, before the children had got anywhere near.

Then Jesus saw it, and of all the things in the day that might have annoyed him, this was the one that did. Let the little children come to me, he said, and do not you dare stop them. Do not send them away. This is exactly who I am here for.

Then he said something the grown ups had to think about for a long time afterwards. The kingdom of God belongs to people like these, he said. Anyone who does not come to God the way a child comes will not get in at all. Not clever. Not important. Just open, and trusting, and not pretending to be anything.

And then he did the thing he had wanted to do all along. He took them up in his arms, one after another, the shy ones and the wriggling ones, and he put his hands on them and he blessed them. Nobody was hurried. Nobody was too small. He had time for every single one.