Suffer the children

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, 'Suffer little children to come unto
me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.'" - Luke 18:16.

Such is the kingdom of God indeed. It has been a hard adjustment to get used to Japanese children, with their fear of foreigners and things that are "different." I always loved pictures of Japanese children when I was in the U.S. - children with big, black, almond eyes, little upturned faces, big smiles.

Unfortunately for me, those smiles did not appear quite so frequently as I hoped. More often than not these beautiful children hid their faces from me or pointed, whispering to the close-by parent, "Gaijin! Gaijin!" or, "Foreigner! Foreigner!"

When I gave Heidi a hand with her children's class a few weeks ago, pandemonium ensued. Children were screaming, jumping up and down on the tatami floor, doing imitation karate kicks with each other within inches of our laptop computers. I tried to rehearse what I would say in Japanese in case the man downstairs came to tell us the neighbors were complaining.

Even in the children's classes I helped with at the missionary family's house, the children's response to me was less than impressive. Since the man of the house was there, they generally refrained from karate kicks and fighting. But for me, a twenty-something newcomer on the floor who could do little more than grunt a strange word or two in Japanese, it seemed hopeless. One girl said, "Bye, bye!" to me in English, just once, before scampering out the door. It made my day. But try as I might, I couldn't seem to connect with the children. They virtually ignored me unless they needed something.

A far cry from the grand images I'd had of ministering to beautiful Japanese children, giving them a torch to carry into the next generation.

My favorite part of the English classes at the missionary family's house, though, has always been the five minutes of children's Bible stories at the end. The lady of the house pulls out the fat Japanese children's Bible, full of bright watercolor pictures, and for those five minutes an absolute miracle occurs. You would have to be there to believe me.

No matter how much goofing off, pencil-throwing or noisy horseplay has been going on during the English lesson, all activity CEASES. You could hear a pin drop in the room. The children (all young boys except one girl, mind you) gather around Cornelia, silent as mice, riveted to the Bible stories. Last week one of the boys actually crept forward on his knees and took hold of the Bible as she read, straining to see the Japanese better.

A miracle. In the missionary family's living room.

I gave up, so to speak, trying to "connect" with the children. My best was enough. And if God used me in obscurity just to hand out pencils and point to correct letters while He planted the seeds of the gospel in their young hearts, that is, and should be, enough.

In fact, in the whole scheme of things, whether or not they connect with me is unimportant so long as they connect with Christ.

If I hand out pencils for Christ's sake, then may He alone be pleased with my work, my best, given solely for Him.

That would be the end of my letter if not for Daisuke.

About two weeks ago I was sitting on the floor with six lively children as usual, bent over English worksheets and writing furiously. I always loved to watch Takumi, the littlest (and probably the brightest) of all the children as he carefully and painstakingly wrote, his long eyelashes pointing downward on his smooth, white cheeks like brush strokes.

But today Daisuke caught my attention. Rather than putting his few Styrofoam letters back in the alphabet frame properly, as everyone else had, he gave up and dumped the whole frame on the floor in a huff. Twenty-six Stryofoam letters piled on the floor.

While the lady of the house continued teaching, I went over to Daisuke (who had barely acknowledged my existence) and helped him pick the letters up and put them in the right place.

Daisuke is a little bigger than the other boys his age, skinny, all smiles, and tends to be a bit of a bully, especially to little Takumi. He's also a little slower than the others. His mind drifts, he plays with his pencil, he is more interested in flicking the spongy letters across the room than reading them.

He stuffed the letters into their spaces awkwardly, sometimes grabbing the wrong one.

"They don't get much praise and affirmation at home," I remember the man of the house saying. "Their dads are gone most of the time. And when they do get attention, most of the time it's negative attention."

As I picked up several colored letters, Daisuke suddenly held out his hand.

I put the letter in it. He put it in the right space and held out his hand again.

There, in the space of thirty second, another miracle had just happened. The tiniest, tiniest flutter of communication between Daisuke and me, Japanese boy and gaijin missionary.

We were silent, save my occasional whisper, "Good job!" and nod of the head when he put the right letter in the right space.

Once or twice he looked at me to see if he was doing it right, and I nodded at him.

I don't remember a thing about the class going on around us. I just remember his small hand, taking my letters, as we finished the alphabet together. Connecting. Communicating.

When Daisuke put "Z" in its place, I took the alphabet frame with a nod.

"Thank you," he said in English, giving me a strange sort of smile. Then he grabbed his pencil and began the worksheet with the others.

As Daisuke struggled with one of the worksheet activities, he did the unthinkable - he turned around and looked at me and asked in Japanese, "Is this right?" I leaned over the table and pointed to the right answer.

He scrubbed at his paper with the eraser, almost tearing it, and wrote the right word.

Then as he went on to the next one, he looked up at me for approval.

"This one?" he asked, pointing to the right word.

I beamed at him and nodded. For the rest of the lesson I was his personal helper, sitting by the table and pointing to the right answers when he needed help. When we split up for groups, he rattled off a long question to me in Japanese. I couldn't understand, and he didn't seem to mind. He found that by putting his pencil through the loops of "P's" and "B's" he could spin them around his pencil. He laughed out loud and, when he caught my attention, pointed to his new activity in exuberance.

Daisuke didn't say good-bye. He bounded out the door when class was over, clumsily grabbing his worksheet and leaving his nametag flung on the table. I didn't care.

Today we connected.

I was amazed at how that tiny, tiny moment affected me. I have been to Mexico and Brazil. I have held dirty children on my lap and watched them fight over who got to hold my fingers (because two hands were not enough).

And yet that one slight interaction with Daisuke, the simple act of holding out a hand, weighed almost as warm in my heart as any of those days.

Perhaps the reason is simple: This is Japan. Everything is different in Japan.

And perhaps there's more to it than that... I think, more certainly than ever before, that God speaks more often in the still, in the quiet, in the imperceptible slivers of time and space that only the hushed heart - the expectant heart straining for His voice - can hear.

God speaks in the bright, the fireworks, the powerful lots of times.

But here in Japan I find Him often speaking as He did to Elijah - in a "still, small voice."

Can you hear Him? Can you read between the commands and Biblical injunctions and hear the WISHES of God, the thoughts of God, the cries of His heart for a people He loves even without reason?

How could anyone not love such a God?

How have we as a people so filled our lives with stuff and business and noise that His voice is lost among the days and weeks and only noticed if it is big, noisy, a billboard with neon lights?

No wonder I have missed Him so many times, settling for the crumbs when He has a feast spread out just for me.

As snow falls here, without a sound, from dove grey skies, I wonder all the more who this God really is and why I have waited so long in pursuing Him. Really pursuing Him.

I know about the call of God. But what about His whispers?

Pray for the country of Japan, where millions have not heard even His loudest shouts.