Hello, Friends. Last week, I was sitting in a restaurant and scratching notes in my journal and waiting for the server to bring me my sandwich. There was this young family in the restaurant, too, and they were back toward the back. They got ready to leave, and it was taking a great deal of herding by the parents.

I estimate that their kids were probably ages three, four and five. The first one goes by—just cute as can be—it was the younger one. And she walks by every table and waves and says, "Bye bye, bye, bye, bye bye." Everybody stops what they're doing and waves back. And I did the same, but also, people midway to taking a bite would just pause and wave. Everybody's smiling and laughing.

It's a delightful moment: the server running back and forth even stops and waves. And then the second of the children in line was a young boy. And for some reason he's walking zombie style or like an old Frankenstein's monster or something like that. And again, we're all kind of enjoying the scene and then and the father's behind those two and then the mother is pulling the last child who evidently doesn't want to even leave the table area.

I just watched all this motion and all of us were enjoying the moment, all of us who've had children and grandchildren. I was reminded of someone who once told me, “children are verbs.” If someone had painted a portrait of me in that restaurant, the title of it would have been simply “Old Man on Chair”—no verbs necessary.

To capture what was going on with this family, you would need a video recorder because it was constant motion. It was activity. If someone were going to write a paragraph about it, it would be all verbs. It would be smiling waving, laughing, playing, pulling, pretending, fussing. Blessing us all.

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.”

There's so many different dimensions to that. Of what it means for us to capture, or at least be reminded of what it means to look at the world in a childlike manner. Also, I think back to when I was a pastor preaching a few times a week and how disruptive it would often get when a child was fussing and crying and walking around and things.

Yet, especially as a bishop, I've learned to understand that the only thing kind of more disturbing than a child making a lot of noise is a sanctuary without children. Celebrate the children in your worship service. God bless you.