Kids are gross. There’s no doubt about it. Imagine every bodily function you are capable of having happen all at the same time, to multiple children, all in the same room. Yet the only thing separating kids from adults hygiene-wise is that we are just better at hiding our grossness.
My lovely teammate Francesca suggested this profound parallel to me one day when I was complaining about cleanliness: we are gross to God because we are covered in sin. Who wants to pick up a smelly, drool-covered, needing-a-diaper-changed baby? Too quickly I want to volunteer not to.
But we were soiled in our sin—much more than just a diaper’s worth. Jesus picked us up out of our mess where we were soiled and rank, he washed us, made us new, and clothed us in robes of righteousness where no matter how badly we soil ourselves again, we stay continually clean. That is love.
When the kids come up to me and try to kiss my face and touch my hair and put my head next to theirs, my first instinct is to pull away and get out lice-free while I still can. But Jesus got lice for me, and much, much more when He took my sin upon Himself by dying on the cross. So if really loving these kids means getting close to them, which means getting lice from them, which means making God’s love for them just a little bit more tangible to them, it’s worth it.
Friends and funny faces.
