stay close
When I get out of the car at the library, I see three children huddled together on the front lawn, their feet hidden in the dewy grass, their bodies turned, their eyes fixed on an old bottle-green minivan. Immediately, I feel a kind of kinship with them, recognizing my spiritual self somehow in the baby curve of their new cheeks and the oblivious way their morning-mashed hair, still downy and fine, stands up in awkward angles. They are unapologetically young, and aware, though not completely, of their own vulnerability. I feel that, see it in the way they wait, standing turned toward that car, the sunlight skimming the tops of their heads and setting them aglow.
If ever-lasting is the life span, and God’s life span is everlasting, we are all just children, our minds and bodies and intellects so young, our attention so short, our awareness so limited. Jesus calls us his little flock, meaning the least, the small, the little.
The oldest child, a boy not more than a few years senior, stands watchful behind the other two, his small hands clamped on their shoulders, tiny fingers gently bunching the fabric of their sweaters. They don’t even seem to notice, their attention entirely captivated by the minivan, or by whatever is happening beside it.
I feel drawn to them because they are the picture of careful attention, of aphorao, I am thinking, as I grab my purse and get out of the car, flicking my library card with my fingers.
Aphorao, the Greek word the writer of the book of Hebrews uses when he or she urges us to run our race ‘looking to Jesus’, means to gaze away from everything else in order to look more closely. God has been inviting me to aphorao, to purposefully look away from countless distractions in order to set my eyes more carefully on the One who embodies the truth about God.
“Now, always stay close to Mom, okay?”
I overhear the older boy saying this as I pass by on the sidewalk, his slow voice still round, still barely old enough for that somber, reverent tone, those warning words, and it makes me smile because God also keeps reminding me that I’m not as old as I think. I glance over at that huddle of children, those siblings, noticing the way the boy inclines his head toward their heads, toward their delicate ears, never taking his eyes off the minivan. I follow his gaze, noticing mom bent over a stroller, pressing a car seat into place, and I catch sight of sweet baby eyelashes blinking against the sunlight that beams around mom’s body on both sides.
I smile wider still, wanting to congratulate her on her kids, on how she’s trained them for safety, how they wait now with their eyes locked into focus on her body, and I smile because I hear the ancient sound of eternal wisdom.
Always stay close to Mom.
I wonder how widely God smiles as we older siblings teach younger Christ followers to abide, to always stay close, with Christ. From God’s perspective, we must look like this huddle of children, even the oldest ones of us still so young, bunching the clothes on the shoulders of our siblings with our careful, tiny-fingered grip, inclining our heads just so, our voices still so round and new. This is how it looks, how it sounds, when mortal beings speak of immortal ideas. We must do it with our own eyes still fixed on Christ; we must keep our advice honest. We must take care, to borrow Job’s words, not to utter what we do not know, things too wonderful for us to comprehend.
Just stay close to me, I imagine that ragged mama saying gravely to her little brood on the way to the library, the way I used to say it to my own as we made a little chain, walking through public places holding each other’s hands; the way Christ said it, remain in me, as he trained his disciples for safety in those last hours before He went to the cross. Discipleship, that long, old-sounding word, really just describes the maturing of a child who learns, often from only slightly older siblings, to stay close to Christ. But it looks like this, this active practice of aphorao, this waiting to move always with Him, this reminding each other to stay, to notice where we are relative to Him.
“Where are you?” God once asked of Adam and Eve, not because He didn’t know where they were, but because they had lost track of where they were in relation to Him.
It bears saying these days, with horror over cultish systems pressing sour in the pits of our stomachs, that Christ never took advantage of the vulnerability of others, never has ripped away the agency God gave us as a gift. But He has been misused more than we little ones imagine. When it comes to love, it’s important not to confuse perversion, that is, what twists and looks away, with the real thing. That boy could turn his siblings around the other way now, could still tell them loudly to always stay close, but this advice would be distorted, having lost that crucial relationship to Mom.
Mom looks up just now, and we share the smile, me glancing again toward her clutch of three, but the children don’t even look my way, just tremble a little, bouncing right where they stand on their grass-hidden feet, because they’ve just spied Mom looking toward them.
