We arrived at a low-income housing district in a city next to ours to find that the majority of families living there were single parent and had a two-week to six-month lease. Once their lease was up, it was time to move on. During their stay, social workers would spend time assessing the family, determining the needs, and helping to teach and/or train the parent occupationally. This meant that little to no time was spent working with the children, most of whom were under the age of six.

So we started playing baseball….

Before long we had ten or twelve little ones taking turns swinging at pitches. We soon realized that for many of them, this was their first time ever holding a baseball bat. They didn’t know how to hold it, much less how to swing and actually hit a ball.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to hold or swing a baseball bat. But I wasn’t constantly moving from house to house, shelter to shelter, wondering where my next meal or warm bed was going to be. These little ones have already experience more pain, confusion, abandonment, and hurt in their short lives than many of us will in a lifetime.

The highlight of the morning was when that started playing a game called “tackle the crazy loud guy.” One of my friends decided to start it by running around and screaming like a mad man. The natural response of every child in the vicinity was to run as fast as they could and attempt to tackle him. Much to their delight, he would eventually go down and they would pile on him and hug him and tickle him until he got up and they would do it all over again.

It reminds me of a time in Luke 10 when little children were trying to get to Jesus and these big manly 13-15 year-old body gaurds stood in the way. Jesus responded by saying, “Let them come to me–as a matter of fact–you come to me like them!”

And then I picture Jesus playing a game of “tackle the crazy loud guy.”