One in Love

The child arrived crying.

Tommy, eight years old. Son of a staff member. Nobody wanted him around.

"Go play somewhere else, little guy."

Giuseppe saw him. "Want to play?"

"I don't know how."

"Perfect. Neither do I."

Giuseppe lowered the table. He took two small paddles. He knelt down.

"Now we're the same height."

Tick.

First shot. Giuseppe misses on purpose.

Tick.

Tommy hits gently. Giuseppe exaggerates the difficulty of returning it.

Tick.

Tommy laughs. Giuseppe pretends to sweat.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Watching them, I saw everything.

"Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3, NIV).

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Giuseppe lowering himself. Christ incarnating.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The child laughing. The Kingdom arriving.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me" (Matthew 18:5, NIV).

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Giuseppe wasn't pretending to be a child.

He was remembering he'd always been one.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"11 to 0 for Tommy!" Giuseppe shouted. "You're a champion!"

Tommy hugged Giuseppe. Both were laughing.

In that moment, they were one. In innocence. In joy. In the Kingdom.

I understood everything.

"You are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28, NIV) doesn't mean losing yourself.

It means finding who you really are.

Children. All children of the Father.

"The Kingdom comes when you stop pretending to be grown up."

"Unity happens in rediscovered innocence."

"Giuseppe didn't play with a child."

"He played as a child."

"And entered the Kingdom."

In my notebook: "Ninth day. I saw Matthew 18:3-5 and Galatians 3:28 dancing between a seventy-year-old man and an eight-year-old boy. Giuseppe showed me that becoming one in Christ doesn't mean losing our differences. It means finding the child in all of us. The part that knows how to play, how to laugh, how to love without conditions."

"Tomorrow is the last day. But I've already learned the most important thing: the Kingdom isn't a place you reach when you grow up. It's the place you find when you remember you never stopped being a child."

"God's child."