Set Before Me

For the last several days, I've been meditating on this one phrase from Psalms: " I will set the Lord continually before me." I should qualify that. My first statement sounds like I've been thinking of that verse all day long when in truth, I've just read it in the morning and then promptly forgotten it. That's how it is with me and loftier thoughts. My day takes over and I barely remember there even IS a God.

But today one of my students reminded me. I'd taken the kindergarteners to the playground because the day was just too beautiful to stay inside. The children were joy incarnate. I stood next to the slide and literally soaked in both the sun and the way these little ones were tumbling together both up and down the slide like so many puppies at play. It makes me so glad to see them so happy, electric with health and energy.

Walter is a natural athlete; small, but muscular. He can swing like a monkey, scramble up and down poles, do flips. He wastes no time when on the playground but is in constant motion. Today he was part of a pack of four kids scrambling up the spiral slide. They'd ascend a little, then fall down on top of each other, laughing all the while. Suddenly Walter stopped, pointed at the sky and yelled, "Mrs. Bernardini! Look! That's Jesus!" He was pointing at the sun, the sun shining bright on his eager face.

The other kids, then I, too, corrected his theology, but now I regret that. What harm is there in a little five-year old boy thinking Jesus is the sun? High and bright in the sky, brilliant enough in the dead of winter to cause a little boy to stop his play and declare for all to hear, "Look! That's Jesus!"

Indeed.