or what God is teaching me through Ava.

Ava, like all children, is present and immediate. Therefore Jesus is not a story or a religion or a theology. He is not even someone she goes to church to learn about. He is her friend. She talks to him, often. He is the one who heals her owies, who provides her food, who takes care of her, who will give her Mama a new baby. He is even the one who “gave Ava to Mama and Daddy.”

Yesterday as I was getting Ava out of the car she said to me, “I like Jesus, Mama. Do you like Jesus?” As I responded in the affirmative, I was struck with what it meant to like Jesus the way Ava likes Jesus. “Truly, I say to you,” says Jesus, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Do I really like Jesus the way my child like Jesus? This is the question on which I have paused for the past two days.

Yes, I love Jesus. I worship Jesus. I long honor to Jesus. He is my Savior, my Redeemer, my Hope, and in these past months my sweet Comforter. But am I enraptured with him? Is he my hero? Do I spontaneously feel affection for him so much so that I must declare audibly, “I like Jesus”?

I remember my prayers before I learned how to pray. They may have been the purest form of communion that I have ever had with the Lord and they rarely had words. I was just awake in the presense of God: he read my heart and I felt his nearness. It was that simple. I didn’t know that I needed to make it simple; it just was. Watching Ava has been a reminder of this; of what it is to know Jesus before you know about Jesus.

Knowing about Jesus is important, learning how to pray is important, but the newness and nearness is lost in the acquisition of knowledge. And then it is given again through the gift of children. Jesus tells us that God chose to reveal things to children that are hidden from the wise. One of those things, I have learned from my daughter, is knowing Jesus simply, fresh with wonder and glory.

It is a joy and a delight to see Jesus through the eyes of Ava. Like tulips that first lift up their heads in March, her Jesus smells so sweet. He loves little children and brings them to his lap, he seeks out a little, unloved man from the top of a tree, he puts his hands on nasty, oozing owies, he tells a very scary storm to “be still.” Yes, Ava, yes. I like this Jesus.

After I had answered Ava’s question, she said, “Jesus likes it that I like him, doesn’t he Mama?” “Yes, Ava,” I replied, “he does.” She paused for a moment and then declared with the utmost certainty, “And Jesus will always be with Ava! Always.” Amen.