To be a kid again...

I played tag today. Stood in a line clenching hands with those next to me, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Nikki right over!” Sat in a circle on the damp grass, nervously looking behind my back as a girl walked around us, waiting to choose the one she would drop the Kleenex behind – they would be the goose to chase her around the circle. I ran through the dark blue, dusky sky, looking for a place to hide amongst the worn-down buildings, so as not to be found….the counting echoing in the distance, “tizenegy, tizenketto, tizenharom…”

It was a time to play, to enjoy the unusually temperate winter evening…a time to not worry about homework, or troubles at home, or the test at school tomorrow…a time to just be.

The funny thing is, though, I wasn’t playing with first graders, third graders, or even sixth graders. The hands that fit into mine weren’t small and sticky, rather, they nearly mirrored my own. A frequently moody sixteen year-old girl, a seventeen year old boy, typically ‘too cool for school’, the twenty-year old who will head to Germany next year as a volunteer. Somewhere around ten in all, everyone far too old to be playing such games without a younger participant as an excuse; yet here we were, excitedly playing these silly games from our childhood. When I got home, I wondered at what it was that inspired those teenagers to play in such a way, to pretend, if just for an hour or two, that they were children again.

While we may spend our younger years waiting to grow up, yearning for the freedom and responsibility that comes with adulthood, I think there’s a little part within each of us that always wants to hold on to being a child in some ways. A part of our hearts that yearns to know we are taken care of, and loved, and that life really isn’t all work and paychecks, but a beautiful gift and journey that we happen to find ourselves on. Thankfully, no matter how old or young we are, we can rest assured that God invites us all, to be His children.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…John 1:12

What an incredible gift, to be given the right to become a child of God. You may not want to go sit on the grass and play duck-duck-goose, or run around playing tag until you get a cramp in your side, but just imagine what it means to be called a child of God – not just God’s friend, student, or follower, but His child.