Month: December 2025

Suffer the Little Children

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

The Christmas Eve service at our church fellowship was packed tonight.  The Lovely Lady and I sat near the front—by design, and not as punishment for a late arrival.  She was the pianist for tonight’s carol singing, and needed a chair a short walk from the platform in which to rest for a few moments before returning to the bench facing the big grand piano again.

I arrived just before the beginning of the service, barely in time to hear the beautiful piano duet that served as a prelude to the hour-long service.  There was a young couple beside me, with a 2-year-old tyke nearby, chewing on a Belvita cookie.  He has learned to break the crunchy cookie crust into pieces, licking the chocolate icing in the center first, before munching the crust between his pearly white teeth.

Again and again, he grins mischievously at me as he takes another bite.

The service is filled with young families such as theirs—and with teenagers who sing out the carols boisterously (and, even a few who stand morosely, mouths closed stubbornly)—and with old gray-hairs who have never missed a Christmas Eve service and aren’t about to start now.

We sang carols.  Old ones.  Familiar tunes and words.  It was beautiful.

The children came to the steps at the front of the auditorium to hear a story retold by a dear friend.  There were thirty or forty of them.  She told the story.  I cried, with no handkerchief to dry my tears.  The sleeve of my tee-shirt had to suffice for that.

I think it was about that same time I became aware of it—the noise, I mean.  I thought back and realized it had been there the whole time.  Through the piano duet, through the carols—even through the opening prayer.

There were “kid noises” sounding constantly throughout the entire service, from start to finish.  Happy noises.  Words being spoken to parents and grandparents. A bit of fussing might have been thrown in here and there.  But it never stopped.

For the full hour, there were children making noise.

I told the pastor yesterday I would try to listen better to his message this Christmas.  He seemed grateful for my willingness to try.  I’m not sure he’d be as pleased now.

I really don’t know what he spoke about.  I’m sure he mentioned a King who came as a baby.  He talked about why that happened.  I’m pretty sure that’s right. 

But I didn’t hear most of it.

I looked down the row from me, and the little boy there had graduated from Belvita cookies to raisins.  One at a time, he lifted them from the little box and popped them in his mouth.  He wasn’t making the noise.  Not this little angel. Well, maybe just a little of it.

I want to be able to blame my faulty hearing for missing the pastor’s words.  It is often problematic to hear what I want to hear when there are competing sounds in the room.  

But that wasn’t it.

The pastor isn’t likely to be sympathetic.

I wanted to hear the children.  Wanted to.

I found myself listening for the individual sounds, the cooing of infants, the almost-words of babies on the verge of talking, even the sound effects of toddlers playing with toys.

As the hour dragged on a little and ran over a bit, I heard the sounds change from contented to impatient, and even downright crabby.

It was lovely.  Every minute of it.

I think we do our Savior a disservice when we insist, “But Little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes,” in our version of Away in a Manger.

As if.

Babies cry.  They gurgle, they laugh, they whine, they jabber.  Sometimes, they even scream.

They’re babies, communicating with the tools they have.  And He did, too.

“Children should be seen and not heard” is not a phrase spoken a single time in the Word.  Not once.

I don’t always use the King James Version when sharing scripture in my writing, but I like the words Jesus uses when He’s unhappy with His disciples’ treatment of the children who wanted to see him.

“But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.'” (Mark 10:14, KJV)

Suffer.  It means to tolerate.  To control your natural response.  To allow something you don’t enjoy.

I didn’t hear the words the pastor spoke tonight (not most of them, anyway).  But I heard every word of the message I was supposed to hear.

In the non-verbal vocalization coming from almost every point of the compass in that auditorium, I heard the voice of God speak to me.

Emmanuel—God With Us—came for every single one of those little ones.  The lovely, quiet ones, listening to the lady’s voice as she told the story on the steps.  The sweet, compliant ones, eating their raisins in quiet enjoyment.  The vocalizers, raising their joyous tones over the sound of the pastor’s voice.  And yes, the crying ones who had had enough, their patience tried beyond its not-so-large capacity.

As a baby, He came.  As a tween, He stood in the temple and taught.  As a young adult, He wandered the length and breadth of the land, sharing the Good News that was to be.

Teaching, healing, weeping, and ultimately, dying, He showed us how to suffer the little ones, the children, who still seek life and love from Him.

Even when we can’t stand the tone of their voices.  Or the language they speak.  Or the way they dress.

He who came as a tiny, perhaps even annoying, child welcomes children of every tribe and nation.

We come as little children to His feet and worship again.

Suffer the little children.

To come.

To Jesus.

It’s what Christmas is all about.

 

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas, if you stop opening presents and listen.” (attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby)

Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.  And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.”  (Matthew 18:2-5, NLT)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Music to His Ears

~ Paul Phillips ~ 2 Comments

It has been a month since I sat down to write.  Oh, I’ve written short notes, and maybe a nugget or two of truth that have come to mind, but the act of writing has been well-nigh impossible (as the red-headed lady who raised me would have said) of late.

So tonight, I sit here in front of my monitor waiting.  Just waiting.  I have words inside me—I know I do.  Why, just this week, I shouted words at the neighbor’s contractor in frustration.  I apologized, too—a necessary evil when one shouts at a stranger.

I even talked with friends at our annual Christmas music party two nights ago.  I didn’t shout at them.  Still, I did use words.

But the words seem a precious commodity as I wait for them to flow now.  Too precious to spend.  Still, one can but try, I suppose.

Bogged down in the stuff of this earth, with inspiration in short supply, it’s easy to become disheartened.  Of late, I’ve turned to the piano I mentioned in a recent post.

But part of the stuff of earth is physical limitation, and, my age creeping up on me, the fingers don’t always want to pull their weight in the piano playing process.  I have a touch of osteoarthritis in my fingers, and nowadays it hurts a bit to play for longer than five or ten minutes at a time. 

I’ve been somewhat vocal in my complaints to the Lovely Lady.  Perhaps more than somewhat.

The other day, she handed me two books of hymn arrangements that I’ve seen before.  They are arrangements her late mother published over 35 years ago, several years before her death.

A much-loved piano teacher in our little town, Viola was stricken with crippling rheumatoid arthritis when she was forty years old.  Her fingers were drawn over painfully, at acute angles to the rest of her hands.  Piano playing was torture for the dear lady.

Still, she continued playing until a week or two before she died at eighty-four years of age.  For nearly forty-five years she suffered, mostly in silence, asking for help when she needed it, but almost never complaining about her lot.

I know better than to think there was a latent message in my Lovely Lady’s gift of those books to me, but I got the message, nonetheless.  My malady is minuscule in comparison to my late mother-in-law’s burden.

I got the message; I also am enjoying the gift.  In her disability, my mother-in-law determined to continue playing music worth listening to, but knew she would need music that fit her crippled hands better than that available in the marketplace. 

She wrote her own arrangements that wouldn’t require her fingers to stretch out to the octaves most music is written with.  Filling in with movement, instead of rich chords, the arpeggios supply the notes necessary to fill the air with beauty and strength.

I don’t suppose I need to hammer the point home.  Many have already done so.

“I was sad that I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet…”

I like the Lovely Lady’s method of making the point better (even if she didn’t intend to make a point, which she avers she did not).

Help is better than a sermon most of the time.  Perhaps, all of the time.  My pastor may have a differing opinion.

The situation reminds me that our lives have been full of people who have taught us—by who they are and how they act—how to be the hands and feet of God here in this place.  None of us has grown to any point in our lives without a few (or more likely, many) people like that.

Parents, teachers, companions, pastors, friends, even strangers on the street, show us how to walk—how to live.  And, we have the opportunity to share that with the generations after us.

I’ve said many times, I hope to be such a person and not the type of man who is more easily used as a cautionary tale instead.  You know—like for yelling at strangers.  

The letter-writing apostle suggested that people could use him as an example of how to live.  He told his protege, Timothy, that his grandmother and mother had been such people, as well; people who lived and demonstrated clearly what they believed, passing it on to their children.

I want to be known for that—not for complaining about the little inconveniences and minor hurts.

I’m going to keep working at the piano.  It may never hurt less.  I don’t know.  But, I’m certain the sound filling the air will be more beautiful than the words of complaint could ever be.

I think Viola Whitmore might even have been pleased to hear it. 

After she corrected my counting and fingering, of course.

 

 

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (Sir Isaac Newton, in 1675)

“In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 5:16, NLT)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

 

I don’t often ask for responses from readers, but it strikes me that there are many of you who have someone who has inspired you along the way.  Perhaps, they still do.  Feel free to drop a note telling us about them.