The Only Lesson We Need to Know

ABCs, 1,2,3s, and Cookie Monster's googly eyes fill nearly every inch of her waking hours. She thinks purple is the prettiest and books are meant to be stacked and read by the pile over and over again. Every book on growth and development pushes the pressure down harder on my shoulders. These are the years that form the basis for who she will become. The lessons learned now are bursting with a lifetime of meaning.

I rock her longer than a nearly two year old really needs to be rocked before bed and I sing one more round of "Jesus Loves Me" and pray to myself and out loud for anybody and everybody I can think of. I turn on the Jesus music and I dance wild and she dances by my side and I know that we are learning the same lessons together.

I don't care how long you've walked the dusty path of needy Jesus following. I don't know if you've been decades in the journey or you are fresh on the path, but what I do know is that we don't ever stop learning and relearning the basics.

Jesus loves me...but do I know? Do I really know that in the everyday when the bank account dwindles and the busy gets in the way of simply living and loving?

We bring out the big Storybook, the one full of real Hope, and we read story after story and I stumble out of bed before I want to read about a man blinded and knocked on His back by the Light of the Living God. And the Word comes alive and I am made alive again in Him, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Bible tells me so...and it does and it is the very Word of God. The wonder of it all that in a world of a million man scrawled books God wrote His own bestseller.

Her little arms stretch skyward and they never quite reach far enough for that last goldfish or stretch wide enough for all the toys she wants to carry. It is the weak that need the strong. It is the broken that need the Healer.

They are weak, but He is strong. 

We are the weak. We are the broken. He is the strong. 

There is no final test in the Christian life. There is no diploma to be earned. No graduation ceremony for those who work their way through the ranks of faith.

We need lessons in the basics all the time. We need to learn and relearn the basics of faith, hope and love until it is all we truly know. There is only one lesson to be learned and it is Jesus mighty to save even me.