With my husband off to work, my coffee in hand, the kids playing quietly in their rooms, it was time for my hour with God. I sat down at my desk, took a deep breath, sipped my coffee, and stared out the window a moment to gather my thoughts. Then I opened my Bible and journal. Pen in hand I had just started to write my morning prayer when both of my children came sidling up beside me.
They didn’t want to interrupt, and they tried to be quiet, “Shhh. Here, put that there. Shhh. Bring that over here.” “What are they doing?” I wondered as I pretended not to notice them. They each took a chair from the dining room table and placed them side by side next to my desk. Then they got their little kiddie chairs and settled them under their “chair desks.” One even got a footrest (aka a step stool) like mine – I’m short – and they each sat down, one with a Bible, one with a book, and they did their “Bible study” like mommy. My heart melted.
As I watched my kids, I thought of how Jesus calls us not just to be with Him, but to be like Him. In Ephesians 5:1, Paul says, “Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children.” There is a familiar phrase that says, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” But the imitation my children were displaying, and the imitation Paul talks about in Ephesians 5:1 are sincere expressions of love, not flattery.
I can’t think of anything much better than to have my own children demonstrate how to be imitators of God. Not out of coercion, but out of a genuine desire to be with and like their mommy. My kids not only want to be with me, but they also want to be like me. That is all the more reason for me to want to be like Jesus because I want my children to be like Jesus.
If we back up a few verses in Ephesians, Paul says to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life… and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24) We must choose daily to put off the old self, put on the new self, and aim to be like Jesus.
Jesus tells us to be like the little children, Paul tells us to be like the little children, and in other letters, Paul tells us to imitate him, as he imitates Jesus. God does not want flattery, he wants sincere love. Just like little children, we imitate Him, just as our little children are imitating us.
“Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children.”
We imitate Jesus like children, just as our children imitate us.
