We had a bluebird house that was visited each year by the little family wearing royal blue jackets and red-brown shirts. I came home one day and Pat told me that she had been watching the Mother bird and her little ones perched on the clothesline. She said that it looked like Mother was giving them final instructions; and then they all flew away. After that day, the little house was silent until the next spring.

One of my favorite times in worship has been the children’s moment. You never knew what they were going to say. With children all I had to do was prime the pump and we had some spontaneous worship. I have always wanted the children to know that they too have a place at the Lord’s altar.

Children may offer us the best glimpse of Heaven we can get on this earth. (At least they can take some of the starch out of worship.) After all, it was children that Jesus was talking about when He said, “…of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Little children in church are brief. Turn around and they are grown.

Where do little birds fly when they get their first feathers? How do they know the way? In his poem “To a Waterfowl,” William Bryant wrote, “There is a power whose care teaches thy way along that pathless coast.” Baby birds and little children share the pathless way into an unknown future.

When they lift their wings to places we can’t go, where will life take them? It is our prayer that they will always know that Jesus is the way, and that they need never go alone.