Dakota's Comment

OK, I said last week that I'd comment more about Jeremiah, and Dakota's comment that sparked some thinking, so here's the story...

We were sitting in services at my parents’ church in Cody, WY on Christmas morning. The pastor had promised a brief service, but several kids in the congregation were a little, ummm… ‘restless’. (Ok, most of the restless kids happened to be mine.) As we sang the song of communion, Dakota (he’s our 3-year old son) leaned over to me and whispered, “Dad, I’m running out of quiet.”

As I stifled my laughter, my mind started to work. Here’s this three year old boy, trying his best to be quiet in the quiet of the moment he sensed happening, but knowing that he was just about to ‘run out of quiet’. There was some noise inside him that just had to come out.

I was reminded of Jeremiah “If I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”

My prayer for our students and my own kids and self is that we would be so filled with the presence of God that we can’t possibly keep quiet about Him... That His Word would be in our hearts, like a fire that can’t be contained… That we would become courageous followers who have ‘run out of quiet’…