A little girl lays down to sleep and leans over to hug the Jesus she’s heard so much about. The faith and imagination in children is strong, and it doesn’t occur to her that this is too silly or socially unacceptable for her to be doing.
A few years earlier, she scolds women older than her own mother who are smothering her newborn baby brother and, the way she sees it, causing his distress. This is unlike her usual behavior, but her need to take care of her people pushes through her fear just enough to let the words come through and burn the memory in her mind.
It’s a glimpse of the fire that burns, low and slow, under her quiet people-pleasing disposition.
The little girl does what seems right to ease the workload of her parents- sinks full of too much soap and breakfasts covered in chocolate chips and marachino cherries at first.
She micromanages games and candy trades with her siblings so everything seems fair in her eyes. Shepherds them to her bed during times of distress. Scolds the youngest when he doesn’t pitch in “enough.”
She is driven to make sure her people are taken care of, achieve approval of who she is, and make the world right again.
There is something in the heart of the little girl who knows. Things are not as they should be, but they will be. It’s heaven set in her heart, but she doesn’t know it yet.
As she gets older, she picks up kindling and drops them into her heart where they add to the fire she didn’t start.
The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
She wants that.
Your kingdom come, on earth, as it is in heaven.
On earth, too. His kingdom is for now, too, not something that exists somewhere outside of her reach.
And on she goes as she walks, the fire building until it comes out of her in words-outbursts and desperation. The old, rotten and poorly built pieces in her are being burned away while new constructs are being put up. It’s a mess, really.
Sarah's Table 