Jesus loves the little children by Emilee

How you choose to react in a certain situation is key to weather it goes right or even worse. Obviously if we don’t have Christ working and have that relationship with Him it will go wrong, dealing with kids is no exception. We have a lot of wonderful kids come to our service on CAT(Children’s Activity Truck),and they are all different in many ways. All of them deal with different things at home, at school, and in the streets.

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So I met a particular child today, a little girl and I had seen her come to the CAT before she was not new. She was pretty small maybe 3 or 4. We started our service as normal but today Houston decided to bring out the big guns and out came the sun beating down on everyone. It made the kids grouchy so they were just not paying attention. We had already decided to cut the time short, but it wasn’t enough for the kids. I saw that same little girl running around and talking really loudly, so I go to her and told her, “ Hon you need to sit down on the blue tarp”. She looked at me and said, “ I don’t want to sit down”. So what does  one do in a situation like this? One you can scream at the kid and tell her  if she doesn’t she’ll  get a whooping or you can force her  to sit by pushing her  to the tarp and by doing that get your own whooping by her mother and sisters.  

Do not the dismayed I didn’t do either of those, I simply told her, “ If you don’t sit down I’m going to pop those balloons and no one is going to get the giveaway”,  so she looked down considered it, then headed to the tarp and sat down. For a minute she got right back up and started walking around and talking to a baby that had no idea what she was saying. The same thing happened repeatedly, so of course I got frustrated. The other kids weren’t helping either the boys were being disruptive, the girls in the back were on their phones complaining. The sun though seemed to be having a grand time. There was even a time I heard that little girl tell her sister, “ I’m going home cause this girl just keep telling me to sit down and I’m tired of her.” After hearing that I knew she was no little girl, and she didn’t like me. 

Job 19:16 “Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me.”  In no way could I compare myself to Job but I felt that, and it brought back to mind at how sensitive I used to be. I’m still pretty sensitive but not enough to base my whole experience with kids to affect it. So by the end of the service I told her exactly why she wasn’t getting the giveaway, and she left and got her brother who did get one. He was a kid himself but had an older kids mind, just the way he spoke showed how mature he was. She still didn’t get the giveaway. I had to stick to my word that she disobeyed and was not going to get rewarded.

When things like this happen, even with kids, you cant look at it by it being their fault. That’s just how kids grow up, not just in the hood, but everywhere. Kids get rewarded just to shut up. We are trying to show them that that’s not how God works, in God’s  word it says “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” -Proverbs 13:24.

Some of the kids don’t get that so when they come to the CAT they don’t know how to behave. God tells us in Psalm 94:12-13 “Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord and whom you teach out of your law, to give rest from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked.” God gave us His word to discipline ourselves  and others. And we thank God for His peace and for His love for His children.