FREE TO BE REAL

Having been in the pastorate for years, I witnessed many a kid tearing through the sanctuary post service, or running full boar through the foyer and out the front doors or bolting in race form down one of the long halls either being chased or chasing someone.  It never bothered me.  There was a family in the church with four kids, three of which were girls and two of which were under the age of six.  Those two little girls loved to run.  I found it entertaining.  One day two ladies in the church came to me after the morning worship service.  They were bothered by something as I could easily see the sanctimonious fervor flushing their faces.  "Did I realize," they said, "that children are running in the church and especially the sanctuary.  AND, that their parents are not stopping them?"  I tried my best to look concerned, but I really wasn't.  They moved onward in their agenda of the running of the kids.  "Now didn't I think I should do something about those children.  Go talk to them or their parents?", they said coming close to full religious indignation.  "No," I said, "those kids are fine and if you are bothered by it, maybe you should go talk to their parents.  But I would suggest you think through it first.  Some of those kids belong to a new family in the church, who just recently started coming and are spiritually very new to God and church in general.  God loves running. He created it and He created kids to do it. They are just being real - who they are."  I'm not sure they liked what I said.  Today I thought about running in church and how God wants us, actually longs for us to be real with Him.  Once in awhile I have to remind myself that I am free to be real with Him.  I don't have to clean up my emotions, my thoughts, my deep hurts, my longings, my sorrow, my heart's desires, my guilt, my torment or my brokenness.  I can in realness just bring it to Him.  When those kids operate in the natural realness of who they designed to be they are totally unaware that they are even running - it's a flow of their hearts to cut loose.  God loves our hearts - the wellspring of our lives.  Our thoughts, emotions, desires, longings reside there - who we really are converge there.  I want to operate like those kids running - my heart free to be me in the way that God created me to operate best as.  Having God so know my heart that when I run in the sanctuary after church he smiles because I'm just being me - being real.