The following poem was written by Rev. Masyn Evans-Clements, and read during worship on the fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024
Love, For Children, Is Simple
Love, for children, is simple.
It’s their default setting.
But they have to learn how to do it well.
They learn from us to be patient and kind.
They learn from us to encourage others and see the best in them.
They learn from us to be attuned to others and
to communicate our needs and feelings when we need to.
Unless they don’t.
Love is not just a feeling or an action.
Love is a person who taught us how to love using his own life as an example.
Highland Park Kids pick out a Christmas Tree at the farm in Elgin
Love willingly and voluntarily laid down his life so we could understand its cost.
Within this simple, enormous act, it’s possible to understand love.
It’s made tangible.
Love steps into our pain and walks in our grief.
It’s children seeing our tears and saying “it’s okay”, almost reflexively as they’ve seen us do so many times.
Rubbing our backs when we cry and slipping their hands into ours.
We grow up and learn to look away from pain.
“Give them their privacy” often translates to “help them hide it so none of us have to see it”.
Love helps us to see a new way forward.
Children see the world as it should be and see where we’re lacking.
We grow up and learn that’s just the way it is.
“Change takes time” so often translates to “that’s a lot of work. It’d be easier to let it be.”
Love sees a need and goes to meet it.
Eating with the lonely looking elderly person at the McDonald’s,
making a friend,
wanting to put a dollar in the offering plate
or hand a water bottle to the person with a sign on the side of the road.
We grow up and learn to press that need down to save face and avoid awkwardness.
“Yeah they do look sad, but let’s leave them alone” translates into “look away.”
But when we give our children these easy answers, we teach them a lesson.
Rev. Masyn and her husband, Brandon, hold a candle and their sleeping baby, Millie, at the annual Christmas Eve Service in 2021.
As Donna Barber says in “Bread for the Resistance”:
“To turn our backs on the hungry requires us
to squelch the prompting of the Spirit of God within us.
To become comfortable with the cruelty of racism necessitates
that I close my eyes to another’s humanity as well as my own.
In order to deny a cup of water to a thirsty child while hoarding a stream,
I must block out the image of God in their face and mar the same on my own.”
Love comes naturally,
The penchant toward seeing injustice our default setting;
The image of God in us.
But we learn to shut it down.
Children teach us to keep our eyes open;
Children teach us to remain awake;
Children teach us to see how we can make a difference.
Unless they don’t.
Love, for children, is simple.
It’s their default setting.
But they have to learn how to do it well.
