They Asked For Me And I Heard A Complaint

They said it in the car.

Not sulking. Not upset about anything. One of them said, can we just have a day where we do stuff with you, and the other one said yeah, and then they went back to whatever they were arguing about.

Four seconds. Cheerful. Gone.

And you drove the rest of the way with your hands on the wheel and a hot feeling in your chest that has not entirely gone since.

Because what you heard was not a request. What you heard was a summary of the last two years, delivered by the only two people qualified to deliver it, in a tone that made it worse because it was so casual.

They were not complaining. You know they were not complaining.

And you supplied the complaint yourself, inside about a second and a half, and you have been carrying the version with the complaint in it ever since.

There is a moment where children come toward somebody and the adults in the room read it completely wrong.

Suffer the little children

Here it is.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:14, King James Version)

Start with what the disciples were doing, because they were not being cruel.

They were managing a schedule. There was a great deal going on, there were serious matters in progress, and children arriving in the middle of it looked like an interruption to people who were trying to get something important done.

That is a completely reasonable reading of a situation and it was entirely wrong.

You are in a room with people who misread what children coming toward somebody actually is, and Mark 10:14 corrects the reading rather than the children. The Holy Spirit is the one who recorded the misreading, and He recorded it because it is the commonest one there is.

Now the instruction, and the shape of it is the whole point.

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not. Both halves are about removing an obstacle.

Suffer means allow. Forbid them not means stop preventing. There is nothing anywhere in that sentence about doing more, arranging more, or producing anything.

You are being asked to stop preventing rather than to add something, and it is written as suffer them and forbid them not rather than as go and organize something for them. The Spirit of God is the one who put both verbs in the negative, and negative verbs are the only kind a tired person can actually obey.

And what the children were after is worth naming, because it was not a program.

They wanted to be near Him. That is the whole of it. They were not brought for an activity or an outing or an event.

You are being asked for proximity rather than provision, and His word has them coming to Him rather than being taken somewhere. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows what a child is after, and it has been the same thing in every century.

Why a request sounds like a charge

Now let me say why one and a half seconds turned a cheerful sentence into a verdict, because it is worth understanding rather than being ashamed of.

A request lands on whatever is already there.

And what is already there, in a woman carrying what you carry, is a running list of everything not done. That list is always open and it is always accurate and it never gets finished.

So a request arrives, and it does not land on neutral ground. It lands on the list, and the list reads it as a new entry.

You have been receiving requests onto a list rather than into a room, and it is written that the disciples misread a thing they were watching happen in front of them. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman what her own hearing is sitting on, and it is sitting on a list that is always open.

And here is what makes it worse in a mother specifically.

Children are the only people whose opinion of you cannot be discounted. A colleague can be wrong about you. A friend can be tired. A child asking for something goes straight past every defense a person has, because there is no version of a child who has an agenda about it.

That is why four cheerful seconds did what a serious conversation with an adult could not.

You have no defenses against those two and you never will, and Scripture has children come without anybody asking whether they should. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows exactly how directly a child reaches somebody, and He put that in the account on purpose.

And one plain thing, said once, because it needs saying.

They asked for more of a thing they like. That is what that sentence was. Children do not request more of things they are not getting anything out of, and nobody in that car was building a case.

You were being asked for more rather than accused of less, and it is written that they came toward Him rather than complained about anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who translates four seconds correctly, and this translation is the whole article.

Stop preventing it

So here is what to do, and it is deliberately the smallest possible version because a large version would go on the list.

One hour. This week. On the floor.

Not a day out. Not a trip. Not a thing that requires planning or money or anybody getting dressed properly. One hour, in the house, on the floor of a bedroom or a living room, with whatever is already there.

You are able to do an hour on a floor, and Mark 10:14 asks for the preventing to stop rather than for anything to be arranged. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a thing small enough to actually happen, and a large version of this would never happen.

And do nothing during it.

No activity. No craft. No game with rules. Lie down on the floor and let them climb on you and talk at you about something you will not follow, and let that be the entire hour.

You are able to give them the proximity rather than a program, and it is written that they came to Him rather than that He put on something for them. The Spirit of God is the one who is in an hour with nothing in it, and He is more in that one than in an organized day.

And put the phone in another room, which is the only thing in this that requires any discipline.

Another room. Not face down, not on a shelf, not in a pocket. They will know, and you will know, and a divided hour is not an hour.

You are able to be entirely in one room, and the written word removes the obstacles rather than adding an effort. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes sixty undivided minutes do what four divided hours cannot, and it is not close.

And when it is over, do not evaluate it.

Do not ask them if that was nice. Do not decide afterward whether it worked. Get up and carry on with the evening and let it have been an hour that happened.

You are finished when the hour is finished, and it is written that the children came and were blessed rather than that anybody assessed it. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what an hour did, and He knows it whether or not anybody in that house says a word about it.