Charles Edison, son of the famous inventor Thomas Edison, was running for political office in the state of New Jersey. Unlike some politicians, he was not interested in using his famous father as a political brownie point. Once, when asked by a reporter about any advantage the name “Edison” might give him, he answered, “I would rather have you know me merely as the result of one of my father’s earlier experiments.”

Last week, we launched into this season’s series of sermons with a look at some of the key things our faith has to say about families. My purpose in this year’s sermons is to look at some of the real things of our lives in the context of the conviction that Christian faith has some vitally important things to say about them. I believe that knowledge of God through discipleship to Jesus provides practical and profound perspectives on everything about the lives you and I lead. Today, I want to sharpen our focus a bit and look at one key ingredient in families, and that would be children.

One of the startling truths we discovered last week is that everyone has a family of some kind or other! And we can make that same bold affirmation about children, not that everyone has children, but that everyone in this room, without exception, is or once was a child. Children are everywhere. You cannot escape them. Adam and Eve hadn’t been here very long before they had children. And they keep coming. So, I think it is safe to say that one of the very real things of life for each and every one of us is children.

What can we say about children? From one of my favorite books, I learned these interesting definitions. A child is, “that which tells in the street what its parents say at home.” A child is, “One who stands halfway between an adult and a TV. set.” Emerson called children, “curly, dimpled lunatics.” Kate Owney said a baby is, “something that gets you down in the daytime and up at night.” The best definition of childhood I found: “that wonderful time when all you need to lose weight is to bathe.”

Children appear early and they appear often in the biblical record. Cain and Able are the first two we hear about, but in many respects they were not the most important, at least, not theologically speaking. Arguably the great story of the Old Testament is the story of God calling Abraham to leave his homeland and to follow God’s leading to a new homeland, where God would bless Abraham and make him the father of many nations, especially the father of the special nation of Israel. The plot of the Old Testament turns on the fact that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, are very old before God more or less miraculously allows them to have their child, Isaac. What interests me here is this simple fact, that in God’s design for human history, the gift of children is essential. That seems axiomatic to you and me, but we do have to admit that God did not have to design the creation in such a way that children were part of it. God could have arranged things so that new people came to populate the earth from some source other than the union of a man and a woman and the birth of babies. But God did not. God’s promise to Abraham that he would give him children too numerous to count is a profound promise. It is a reality upon which much of the rest of human culture and meaning is based. Sometimes people refer to their child as “one of God’s little blessings,” but that is not the case. In fact, a child is probably God’s biggest blessing of all. Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” Carl Sandburg said a baby is, “God’s opinion that the world should go on.” Children are not simply the accidents of their parent’s experiments. They are part of God’s design for the world.

If ever we are tempted to take the fact of children for granted, we need only to consider the simple truth that if we ever stop having children that would be the end of the human race and the end of what we consider to be the most important part of God’s great plan of creation. And so, if the birth of children is crucial, it also follows that the nurture and care of children is the most important enterprise of human civilization. Having them is not enough. We must also help them grow. Scripture almost takes this truth for granted, but there are glimpses of its reality shot through the biblical story. From the Bible’s perspective, the crowning achievement of a woman is to have children, and for a man, the greatest blessing of life is to have children. The Psalmist writes, “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house,” and “like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.” Proverbs notes that, “grandchildren are the crown of the aged.” Not everyone is intended to have children, of course, and that is part of God’s plan as well, but the having and the nurturing of children is a huge part of God’s design.

Evelyn Waugh sarcastically noted that children are just, “defective adults,” but scripture sees them, of course, in a much more positive light. Scripture also is sprinkled with deadly serious admonitions to parents and to the larger community to exercise their nurturing role with great love and with great care. Again, the Bible assumes that parents and all adults will do everything in their power to insure the growth and success of children. One of scripture’s most important analogies for the love and care that God has for us is that of the love that parents have for children. If that is the best image that God can use to describe how he feels about us, then how important must be the earthly manifestation of that relationship as well.

In a recent interview, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked, “So how does an average, unmotivated kid rise to become the top-ranking officer in the U. S. military?” Powell answered, “I was blessed with a family that kept me in play. They wouldn’t let me fall by the wayside even though I would have done it in a heartbeat if I did not have them. I sometimes use the metaphor of the pinball machine. You know, you shoot this ball out and out comes this kid, and the kid goes bouncing around the pinball machine, hitting the bumpers and heading into the holes that take you nowhere, and just about the time you’re about to slide off into nowhere, the flippers kick you back into play. That’s your parents, it’s your family, your cousins, your peers, your teachers, your coaches, your ministers, your rabbis. Kids need adults to keep them in play while they’re figuring out where they want to go.” “What a kid needs is the tribal experience that comes from family.”

Children deserve the very best that society has to offer by way of encouragement, discipline, guidance, and care. They are not just miniature adults, or defective adults, or accidents. They are immeasurably valuable beings who not only need to be shaped and formed by the more adult world around them, but who themselves have much to teach as well. Jesus was noted for many unique and revolutionary things in his life, and one of them was his attitude toward children. By and large, he seemed to reflect the larger wisdom of the Judaism into which he himself was born. But he gave even greater status to children as he welcomed them into his presence in situations where children might normally go unnoticed and even unwanted. Beyond his attention and love, however, Jesus indicated that children can teach adults some very important lessons about the Kingdom of God.

As some of society’s most vulnerable and dependent members, children serve as living examples of how the Kingdom works. When it comes to the Kingdom of the Heavens, as Jesus sometimes called it, we are all children, completely vulnerable and dependent on God. Adults don’t like to think that way about themselves, but we are. Children must rely on others for their protection, the sustenance, their survival in the world. And by and large, they do so, in absolute trust in their elders to take care of them. God will so take care of us, Jesus teaches. We are likewise totally dependent on God for protection, for sustenance, and for survival in the world, though we act as if we are not.

A story is told of Pablo Picasso, that in later life he visited an exhibition of children’s drawings. He observed that, “When I was their age, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.” God has made the world in such a way that it needs continually to be blessed with children. Children need adults, and surprisingly enough, adults need children, too. They can be life’s greatest challenge. They already are life’s greatest blessing. May it not take us a lifetime to learn how important they are and how responsible we adults are to nurture them. And may we spend a lifetime learning all the lessons they have to teach us.

Amen.