Kayla, my ten year old, and I have a little spiral notebook tug-of war going on especially on Sunday mornings. I always have a small spiral notebook in my purse – mostly for my menu planning and grocery lists, but also for those occasions when I need to jot down a phone number or email or note to myself. Well, I end up buying these little spirals OFTEN because a little girl who sits next to me at church every week inevitably takes it out of my purse and proceeds to draw pictures. Lots of pictures on lots of pages. Recently, I decided to buy her her own spiral notebook complete with adorable puppy dogs on the front just for the purpose of Sunday-drawing-while-Daddy-is-preaching. Guess how many times we’ve remembered to bring it to church? Yeah…about twice out of the last 6 weeks.

So, yesterday was no different. She reached down into my purse for the notebook and a pen and began to think about what to draw. She even asked me for ideas. I suggested the beach, since we just got back from Maine. But when I glanced down awhile later, this is what I saw, and I knew immediately what she was drawing, which was a MUCH better idea than my beach idea. (And by the way, she doesn’t always draw stick figures at age ten – in case you were wondering. She’s actually a pretty good artist!)

Our sermon series this summer has been called “The Question of Jesus.” We’ve covered topics like the Truth of Jesus, the severity of Jesus, the suffering of Jesus, and yesterday’s topic was the power of Jesus. Robert was talking about the ascension of Jesus and Jesus’ encouragement to the disciples that after He leaves the Holy Spirit would come – and come in much power.

From the time of the ascension and the first 500 believers, this movement grew to 20 million strong in a relatively short amount of time with Constantine finally making it the official religion of the Roman Empire. And now, all these years later that same movement has reached even into Amherst, MA – which almost anyone would admit is miraculous.

It began with 500 people in Jerusalem, and it spread to Judea, Samaria, and to the literal ends of the earth.

This is Kayla’s interpretation of that. One neighbor telling another. That neighbor telling a friend and so on, which is how her Daddy kept describing as the process by which the mission was and is accomplished – those friends and neighbors all empowered to do such witnessing through the Holy Spirit who is available to all believers at all times.
(Via obedience, though, which was the point of the sermon – which you can actually listen to here.)

Much more powerful than a drawing of the beach.
One that I’m happy to have as a reminder in my little grocery-list spiral notebook.