"The Big Kids"
EPISODE 196
See Children Like Jesus Did
What does Jesus' work have to do with his desire to "let the little children come" to him (Matt. 19:14)? The Bible Geeks A.V. Club is back to discuss season 1, episode 3 of The Chosen! After a brief recap of the story, we take a Closer Look at the Scriptural background for the episode's plot. We learn from two moments in Mark 9 and 10 when Jesus engaged with children (Mark 9:35-37; 10:13-16) and examine our engagement with kids in light of the Savior's example. There's more to think about on this subject than you may realize! We hope you enjoy reflecting on these dramatizations of Jesus' life as much as we've enjoyed talking about them!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Our Master’s willingness to take time for children should affect our choices.
This Week's Challenge: Watch The Chosen - S1E3 and talk about it with a friend.
Episode Transcription
Now I'm thinking about 14 year old Bryan kind of hanging out with all the Please don't. Please don't think about 14 year old Bryan All the big kids. Moving on Okay Well hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast This is episode 196 I'm Bryan Schiele I'm Ryan Joy And thanks so much everyone for tuning in on the heels of our last episode where I was not a part of it. I am going to talk a little bit more on this one than I did on the previous one Sorry to everyone in advance for that But we are getting into another episode and by popular demand we are going to do another AV club here on this episode and we're going to be talking about The Chosen. Season 1 Episode 3. Jesus Loves the Little Children. The heart that just comes out of that voice It's deeply moving Oh man. Nothing makes it sound more appealing than like a robotic voice telling us how Jesus loves the little children. But yeah Getting back into The Chosen. This was a huge thing from our previous in-betweener episodes that we did not too terribly long ago I think you can probably go back to episode 178 and 179 for our previous conversations in this series and hopefully if you were following along you have not waited as long as we have waited to watch them cause yeah, there's a lot of action happening in The Chosen series I think they're coming out with season 4 here not too long after this episode drops We gotta catch up man. We got some catching up to do no doubt. So I'm excited about this conversation because this episode, season 1, episode 3, it really gets super interesting as the focus is much more on Jesus here how he befriends and teaches a group of little children who discover his camp and it's this cool little intimate story about Jesus and these kids. But before we get into that, let's have our icebreaker question to kick this thing off and we're gonna ask each other, who made you feel a part of something bigger than your small little world as a kid? This one had me pondering for a bit trying to get inside what we're thinking of but in light of watching the episode and thinking about how Jesus really connects with these kids it made me think about times when someone older than me, especially someone I thought was cool, took an interest in spending a little time with me. And our preacher in Virginia who later became my brother-in-law would take me fishing or he would, sometimes he'd have me over to come over to his apartment and play pool and he always had cream soda which I thought was so cool we didn't ever have bottles of cream soda come on. And we got close and those memories stood out and it's not really shocking that those conversations led to more deep and important conversations and he's the one that eventually baptized me those kind of connections when you're just doing something silly and fun, you're just bowling or something, can lead to those important questions whenever someone feels safe and able to feel invested in, feel like there's an opportunity for somebody that you look up to to share some thoughts and some wisdom as Jesus does with these people here. How about you? What do you think of when you think of someone making you feel a part of something bigger back when you were little? Yeah, I think I was going to answer a different way, but hearing you talk the way that you did, I was obviously thinking when I was little about how I was involved in so much of my parents life growing up and their friends and all of the things that they did growing up, like I was just always in toe and I know a lot of the people there who when I was really little, they just loved having me along which was awesome, but then I was also thinking about you, how I know we've got not a huge age difference, but at the time when I'm just barely in high school and you're off into college age, it feels like this huge gap, but I can remember even growing up how you reached down to a lot of the younger kids and made them feel a part of things and that was a huge deal for me as well. So yeah, I mean there's definitely examples in my own life where these people who you just thought they were so cool and you wanted to be like them and getting to know them and feeling a part of that group, which is definitely I think echoes what we're going to be talking about in this episode, because if you actually watch season one episode three, which by the way if you haven't already, pause the podcast and go watch this episode, and yeah, there will be plenty of spoilers here in the conversation, but that is exactly what Jesus does with this little band of children that we're going to talk about in a little while, but before we get there, let's go to our Like the Teacher segment and we're going to find a place where Jesus shows us by his example how we can be more like him. Yeah, I love this passage here and I appreciate what you said just a minute ago, now I'm thinking about 14 year old Bryan hanging out with all the... Please don't. Please don't think about 14 year old Bryan. All the big kids. Moving on. Okay, well I really thought this was an interesting selection that you pulled out for this conversation to start with a Like the Teacher in Mark 9 verses 35 to 37, and this is where Jesus sits down, he calls the twelve to him, he says, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all, servant of all." And he took a child, he put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me." So, really profound thing that Jesus is doing here, especially if you follow the flow of the text, and what... Where do you go with this when you think about how we can be like Jesus here? I think that's where the power of some of these chosen episodes fits in where I've read this section in Mark 9 tons of times but then watching this episode and then coming back to thinking about this passage just highlights maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, and it reminds me of this common TV and movie trope when a character is really bad with kids, like somebody hands somebody their baby, and immediately upon grabbing the baby starts crying and screaming, and so the person hands the baby off to somebody else, and immediately the baby stops crying and is fine, but every time they try to pick them up, it's like the baby knows that this person is not good with kids, and I see that with Jesus here in this episode of The Chosen, and then also in this verse, Jesus has to be good with kids. Look what he's doing here. He's calling all of his disciples to him, but he's basically saying, teaching them this lesson about being a servant and he takes a child. Like, we read the verse and we're like, "Oh yeah, he took a child." But hold on. He grabbed someone's kid. And he puts the child in the middle of all of them, and to have the child not immediately turn and run away or kick Jesus in the shins and take off running or whatever, but it doesn't feel like this is like a toddler adolescent kid. It almost feels like a baby. I don't know how old this child would have been, but he takes the child in his arms. And I'm just seeing here how even just the act of drawing a child close to him, and he's a natural with kids. He's not a father. I mean, he's not an earthly dad, but like, he's so comfortable with kids. And I think I feel like kids are really good judges of character sometimes. I think they can see right through people a lot of times. And I have a feeling that people would have seen or little kids would have seen right through if Jesus was faking. But he's not. And as he reaches down, he picks up this child. This is just a normal conversation that he's having as he's holding a child. This isn't awkward. It's not out of place. It's just this like simple example of how innocent and receptive that we should be to the truth that he's trying to get them to see. But he's doing this and demonstrating this in a way that just shows how much he loves even these little ones. And that idea, that whole concept of him being good with kids, I think is so powerful for me. And I don't know if we've shared this before, but I always tell my wife, if there's anybody who I'm going to vote for or anybody who I'm going to put my name in the hat to be in office somewhere, it's going to be the person who I could see inviting over to my home and letting them watch my kids. And I would totally let Jesus come in and watch Ashlyn if Jesus were around. I'd totally let him come in and watch her. Because I trust that he knows what he's doing. It's just such a cool little tiny view that we get into Jesus here in this chapter. The episode does really highlight these moments. And this isn't the only moment in Mark where he has an interaction with kids like this. Exactly. I will talk later on about another interaction in Chapter 10. But there's a moment in this episode where he's saying goodbye to all the kids. And he's just appreciating how well they've learned. He says he hopes his later students will listen as well as the kids. But he says, "I suspect my other students will lack the understanding that you have." I think that's really cool. And that kind of sets up really what's happening in this passage in this whole section of Mark, which we talked about before chapters 8 through 10, where Jesus is really dealing with the blindness of the disciples. And this, what we're at here in Chapter 9, is about humility. But it's one of these on the way toward Jerusalem passages where the disciples follow up Jesus' explanation of what He must do, what the Messiah really is. That He's going to be rejected, He's going to be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, He's going to be condemned to death, He's going to raise up, He's going to go through all these things. And the disciples immediately afterwards misunderstand the whole point of everything. And whether it's Peter rebuking Him or James and John arguing about who should sit next to Him in the Kingdom or whatever, or this passage, which is the other one that's like this, we see them totally missing the point. And they're arguing here about who was the greatest. And in the ancient world a lot of people considered serving demeaning. Plato said, "How can a man be happy when he has to serve someone?" And yet Jesus says the greatest will be servant of all. And then what you drew this picture of as He brings this kid to Him, He's giving a living illustration. And children were as low in social status as anyone in that culture. I think it's hard for us to relate to this idea, but no one would mistake a child even today, but for the greatest, for the most honored, for the most powerful, I mean they had no power. And they were not held in the kind of esteem that people today hold them in. But Jesus takes a child into His arms, not as an example of humility, that this child is so humble, but as an example of the one who takes in the one who is least and last in society and gives them a welcome, gives them attention, gives them, as He says, receiving one such as this. If we welcome one such child in His name, we welcome Him. And not just Him, but the one who sent Him. So Jesus shows us how to be servant of all as the King, the one who is like most seriously concerned about all that matters and the one who deserves all of the honor, holds in His arms somebody's society would overlook. And so it's just like, it's a challenge to disciples. Do we give children and others who are lowly this kind of attention and honor and service? And I think that's where a lot of our conversation is going to be as we work our way through this episode is, do I do this like Jesus does this? Would I give this attention or even the attention that we talked about earlier that we received? Am I showing up for kids and others in this same way? I think you're highlighting on the word receive there is a really powerful way of seeing this, because it isn't Him telling everybody that they need to be like kids, although He does say that elsewhere, but here the focus is on receiving and of course, you can definitely see where that would be a powerful thing as they're going off and becoming evangelists really reaching out to everyone, not just those of a certain socioeconomic status. And so let's move on here to our second segment on the episode and that's Here's the Story. Here's the Story. So we're going to do a quick recap here of this episode of The Chosen, Season 1, Episode 3. The title is Jesus Loves the Little Children and up until this point in the first two episodes of the series, we've seen very little of Jesus. We talked on the first conversation that we had in episode 178 about how Jesus copped in at the very end of the episode, but really all the focus there was on Mary and her having this demon and on Peter and on Matthew and all the disciples, all the chosen actually. And then we see in episode 2 this brief visit of Jesus at the Shabbat dinner that Mary was having in her home. And we've also seen Nicodemus, we've seen Andrew, Matthew, Peter, Gaius, all these other people. But so far, The Chosen has been very light on the Messiah until now. And in this episode, we see really just the whole focus on Jesus. Yeah, not even just Jesus, but really on these little kids and their interaction with Jesus. So let's tell the story here of episode 3, Season 1, and maybe we'll get into a little bit deeper look later on after that. Yeah, this episode goes by fast. It does. It really starts out, Jesus is praying, he's camping alone outside of Capernaum, and he's doing some woodworking, and a little girl named Abigail stumbles into his camp, and she's hiding behind some wood and watching him. She plays with his stuff while he's away. And then after she watches him, she seems to decide he's safe, he's a kind man. And there's this emphasis, I think throughout the whole episode really, but in this beginning part of him doing basic life things, which I feel like it's just grounding him. He entered in those earlier episodes with this heroic gait, like, you know, boom! He's healing, he's doing this work, he has this dignity and this strength, but you see his humanity as he's tending a wound or eating or cleaning his teeth, getting ready for bed, all that stuff. And I thought that was cool. And so Abigail's been kind of neaking around behind the scenes, and they don't really have much of an interaction right off the bat until she brings her friend. And so Abigail invites her friend Joshua, they call him Joshua the Brave, Jesus does. Jesus calls him that, yeah. Jesus calls him Joshua the Brave. So obviously Jesus is a nickname guy, apparently. So she brings Joshua to Jesus, and Jesus then teaches both of them, and begins to talk to both of them. And the crowd starts to gather, and there are more people, more little kids, not even people, more little children decide to come, and soon Jesus has an entire little gaggle of children all just coming to hang out with him whenever they're free and not doing something. Jesus is there camping, and it's kind of cool. I don't know if this ever happened, obviously these are all fictitious sorts of stories that we're reading about here, but man, doesn't this feel like John chapter one in like miniature form, in child form? Oh yeah, yes, exactly. Abigail's bringing her friends, and really just such a cool way of seeing how they're interested in what he's doing. Yeah, Jesus highlights Abigail towards the end as almost an ideal disciple, as he says, "I hope that they will bring people to me like you did, tell others about me, and will listen as you did." So then we go into this point where she brings not only Joshua, but a bunch of other kids, as it keeps growing, as the Gospel does, as people are fascinated with Jesus in real life and keep showing up, and Jesus tells the kids they can stay, but they have to help him with his work. And so there's this cool like working side by side with Jesus, and then afterwards he talks to them about love, about wisdom, there's this comment that Joshua the Brave makes about what he's heard from the Rabbi, about the Messiah, he's going to come as this military leader conquering Rome, and Jesus thinks with him about that, telling him, "Yeah, honor your teachers and your parents, but not everybody knows all the answers that they think they do." And he's asked why he's here, and he quotes Isaiah 61, which Luke records as the passage he used to announce his ministry at his own local synagogue whenever he goes into Nazareth, and he's handed the scroll, and he opens and he says, "This is why I'm here. I have the Spirit of the Lord on me, and I've come to set the captives free to announce the year of the Lord's favor." And then Jesus moves on. He has these interactions with them, and then whenever Abigail comes back, she sees that he has gone to do his work elsewhere, as he kept saying he would. He's a wanderer here, foxes have holes, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. He's going around from place to place, doing his work, but he leaves a gift for her and a message. And he had said this thing about how rich people like to buy toys for kids, and so he whittles these beautiful toys, but the message says in this thing that he's written out for Abigail, knowing she would come, it says, "I'm not just here for rich people," and she tells her, "You're really special," and he made a cool toy with these different horses and something for her to play with with her dolls, and that's where it ends, it's just her sitting there, having been blessed by the presence of Jesus. It's such a cool episode, and like you said, it's so fast, but it's one of the ones that after watching it just really stood out to me. I remember how I felt when I watched this for the first time, because it really did highlight just how Jesus interacts with people, which we really haven't gotten a chance to see up until this point in the series. So let's move on from "Here's the Story," and let's take a closer look. "Number one, perhaps you better take an away team down and have a closer look." "I said, Dr. Crusher, join me in transporter room three." All right, transporter room three is activated, so we are going to take a closer look at this episode. I love here that not only was Jesus welcoming to little children, because we see that all throughout here, but in the Gospels, when we read, we do find him just valuing their contributions, and not even just in the ways that he called them to himself or didn't keep them at distance, but he really did value what they were able to do. I'm thinking about John chapter 6, where he's going to feed miraculously this number of people, and he starts with fish and loaves, but who provides the fish and loaves? Oh, it's a little boy. It's a little boy who provides the fish and the loaves, and he's able to take what the little boy provides and turn it into something amazing. You know, he didn't cast him off, like, "Oh, you're not that important. Go find your dad to give me something bigger than that." No, he took whatever this little boy could provide, and he did what he did with it. He also used a 12-year-old girl who was dead, actually, in Luke 8 and brought her back to life. Amazing things that he was able to do, showing all of his power and all of his mercy to even just this little child. And like you were highlighting, kids really were not that important back then, and so to involve children as such a valuable part of his ministry early on was huge. But then as you look closer at Jesus' interactions with children, you know, I think it just speaks volume about his character and what he was motivated by. He's not so high that he can't look down to even the lowest, and that's what we already talked about. He was trying to get his disciples to do as well, to receive these little ones. And I think it's so cool here how you see the episode title here, "Jesus Loves the Little Children," but as you think about that song back in Sunday School, one of the other phrases that were in that song was, "They are precious in his sight." And I think that is the point. That is what we see in Jesus throughout his ministry, that even little kids were so precious to Jesus. And isn't that, like, one of the biggest fields that we can ever evangelize in, one of the biggest influences that we'll ever have on anybody are on these smaller relationships that we have with some of the tiny humans in our life. And how cool is it that in their questions and all of their intrigue, that we can really lead them into some deep conversations about the Lord that Jesus himself leads these little ones into when he's talking about Isaiah 61 and all these things in this episode that we've just got done watching. It does. It makes such a big impact on you to have those interactions when you're young. We say they're impressionable. Like, there's a soft clay that you're making an impression in. And I love those points you made there. I was thinking about taking a closer look at this idea that children were not so highly valued in that time. We talked about Mark 9, the next chapter, Mark 10, verses 13 to 16, I think highlights it even more when the disciples are rebuking people for bringing children up to Jesus. And Jesus, it says he was indignant. He's taking the exactly opposite view of the disciples' priorities. I love the examples you gave of kids that he was interacting with. But here, the disciples are directly stating how they see children as a waste of time. They're rabbi, the Messiah has such important matters to attend to. And I like what James Edwards says in his commentary on this passage. He says, "The modern West regards tenderness to children as a virtue. Politicians secure votes by holding and kissing infants. Ancient Jewish society, however, did not regard children with the same affection." I'm abbreviating here, but he says, "Childhood was typically regarded as an unavoidable interim between birth and adulthood, which a boy reached at age 13." When will search Jewish and early Christian literature in vain for sympathy toward the young comparable to that shown by Jesus? That statement is, I think, really strong from somebody who's researched some of this. And so, obviously, the priorities of our Master should shift and shape our thinking as his disciples. And that's probably a lot of why children are somewhat viewed differently today. But still, we get busy. We overlook kids and think that maybe there's more important things than taking real time with them. And slowing down, that's one of the things that strikes me about how Jesus interacts here. He just takes time. He's so unencumbered by other things. Who had more important work to do in the history of the world than Jesus? But this doesn't feel like a fiction to me. That reads like my Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke, Gospel of John reads when I read it, of how Jesus slows down with people. And he's not caught up in I've got a million things to do. And he just interacts with them. And he conveys to these kids that they matter. And I need to do that. Like Jesus did. Last week I preached from Isaiah 43. And there's a lot there in that chapter. But this message that Jesus keeps bringing up about how special these kids are, he must have said it like five times in this book. You are so special. And we don't find those exact words in our New Testament. But that is what so much of the Bible is telling us. And we need to get that across to kids. We need to get that across to everyone. We need to receive that message. God says in Isaiah 43, verse 4, "You are precious in my eyes." What is that part of the song you just sang? They are precious in His sight, yeah. And God says "You are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you." Like you don't see that phrase. Sounds like a Hallmark card or something. But this is in your Bible, God talking to His people. "I love you. You're precious to me and honored." And Jesus over and over again conveys how precious people are to Him in the way He interacts with them and what He says to them, ultimately in the cross and in what He's done to redeem us. And I love that was in His final message to Abigail. "You are so special." And that's a message that all of God's people need to understand and perceive that our Lord sees us that way. Isn't that good? Let's move on to our Reach Out question, which maybe we'll get a little more personal. Reach out, reach out and touch someone. So our Reach Out question here is how does this episode and its focus on Jesus' interaction with children encourage you in your interactions with kids today? Maybe this never happened. Okay, this may be just completely fictitious. I'm sure it was. But you have to imagine based on everything that we've been talking about and all these examples from the Gospels of how Jesus interacted with children, then maybe we have something to learn. And yeah, I definitely do. So what do you get from this conversation? Yeah, that's a great way to frame it because there's so much. Mark is very clear. He gives all these summaries that Jesus was doing all these other things, all these summary statements, John at the end of his Gospel, many more things we could write, many more things. But they choose these things, these moments, and they have chosen these inspired writers to include these stories about Jesus' interaction with children and how he esteemed them and received them and blessed them. And I think that's important. And going back to something that you just said about how we might have expected Jesus to be proclaiming a message with authority out among the religious leaders. And the thing is, he did that too. But he's this study in contrast that we expect him to be one way or the other or we have an idea of what it means to be mighty and strong or to be a conqueror or to be a warrior as opposed to what we actually learn from him. And he has this strength and authority everyone's impressed with and yet he has this gentleness and this compassion. And so all of it plays together and I like how this episode put together the themes of Jesus' work, which was to me like this underlying running theme throughout the episode. And then his attention to children, which could, from a particular point of view, seem like opposites. This attention to playing with kids and talking to kids could seem like the opposite of productive work, like this frivolous indulgence of a nice but unserious man, like a nice old grandpa that doesn't really have anything much to do except play with his grandkids or something. There's this, well, doesn't he have something real and important to do? And it starts this episode with this intense period of prayer in solitude, like before the credits he's just asking God to speak through him and you can tell the fierceness of his prayer is about what he has to do. And as you mentioned, there's a lot of talk about mission in this episode. And then as he's working on this lock and key, as he's doing some woodworking with his hands, and when he finishes it, he says "It is good." And it just reminds us that this is the one who made so much more than this woodworking. He is somebody who knows how to get a job done and has cosmic level work to do, and he keeps bringing up how he has work to do. Every time she comes, he says "Okay, but I have work to do. The kids come." "Okay, but you're going to have to help me with the work." Which is cool because Jesus seeks partners in his work, and so he recruits these kids to help him. And then when Joshua the Brave brings up the Shema, the Shema is "Hero Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind." He says "I will be doing my work in many places." As if there's this connection between loving God and doing his work. And so this theme of the work keeps developing while in the foreground, what we keep seeing him do is interact with these kids. And the more we watch him, we realize that talking to these kids is his work. This is how he's going to glorify and love the Father. And I just think that going with that "why either or," Jesus' both and, this is an overlap of the real work is people work. Because it's just so easy to think. I have real work and important things to tend to. But these kids that come up to us and have questions for us and have concerns, they are important. Their questions matter. Their concerns matter. Slowing down and freeing up my attention to give to them matters. Whether that's my kids or extended family or all the kids at church, getting down on their level, sitting down on the floor with them, or kneeling down, hearing them, looking them in the eye, giving them time to get past the flummox of "Okay, he's actually asking, like expecting to hear from me," and then starting to work through what they really have to say. And you aren't going anywhere. You're just going to be with them. And that's what we see from Jesus here. And I think it is essential that we not only slow down, but just recognize the value of each person, especially those, of course, that we are given to shepherd. Yeah, I can definitely see as you summarize the episode and we're talking about how Jesus is focusing on the people work, I can see how really the whole time he's talking about work, he's talking about doing all these things, and he's not planning for a day in the future where someday he'll actually be able to start doing his work. No, like he's actually doing the work at that moment. And I think sometimes I struggle with that. And I don't want to struggle with it necessarily, but man, do I relate with Jesus' disciples as they're trying to keep the parents at bay, you know, like he's got to focus, he's doing something important and you're distracting him right now. He's so busy. There's a lot to do. And yeah, I sometimes just forget to make contact with the tiny humans around me. Like they're all around me. And sometimes I neglect that more often than I'd care to. But I think maybe this ties into a reminder that we've talked about on the podcast before that like to live joyfully and to live with gratitude and just not living so far in the future or so far distant from my current situation. Like what can I be happy about right now? What can I enjoy right now? And like you talked about slowing down. I think I so need to do that. As Jesus does in this episode, like he's just, you know, making little jokes with the kids. Like he's playing games with them. He's enjoying the things that they're doing. He's inviting them to partner with him. And just to imagine that Jesus' life, if it was a well-rounded life, it was full of these kinds of little moments of celebration, little moments of joy. I'm sure of it. Like I'm sure Jesus knew how to tell a good joke or, you know, to laugh along with people. And I guess I just like to see myself embrace that a little bit more. That kind of lightheartedness. And people who love me most, my wife for sure, gets after me sometimes with always being so serious. But you know, I try to put in the work in connecting with my daughter in small ways like that. And I'm getting better at that. I'm putting more of a focus on that. But man, it's just such an important thing to focus on is our opportunities to influence these impressionable minds, as you described them just a little bit ago. But I also love talking about joking and lightheartedness and joy and all these other things. Man, I love it how Jesus just doesn't pull punches with them. Like the teaching he's giving them in this episode. And really, you have to look at all these examples in actual scripture that we've referenced. The kids are probably hearing all the same teaching that the adults are as he's bringing them close, as he's pointing to them, as he's using them and bringing them nearer to himself. He's not pulling punches here. And I love that too about our interactions with little ones. Like even in our Bible classes with some of the younger kids that I teach from time to time, I love the opportunity to just speak to them like I would talk to an adult class. Not dumbing things down for them because Jesus, as he's doing here in this episode of this fictitious show, but also that we see him doing in the Gospels, he's talking to people where they are, but he's not dumbing things down for them. And I love that focus too, that we can challenge and get really deep with kids, but maybe in a way that they can receive and that they can hear. And to give them credit, like man, if everyone was excited about life as you are, people would be in a lot better place. I don't know, I have a lot to learn from this episode and I could probably do a lot better job, but always a good encouragement for sure. Yeah, I relate to a lot of what you said there. I think that it's always positive to see godly men investing in kids. I think sometimes it feels like people have just sort of, especially in the church, just relegated that to women to deal with kids as opposed to... You want to get Adrian back in here to talk about that? Yeah. I think that we all have benefited from both perspectives. There's a reason god gave not only children, a mom and a dad, but gave the church men and women to influence the young people around us. And I think that's really good. And it just, it takes time and it takes a willingness and a commitment to realizing that your job isn't just "Okay, once they're 15 and above, now I'm investing in them" or whatever age. Let's get into that before they hit that age and let's engage with them. So I appreciated you mentioning there how you have, like you and Alan have taught a lot of kids classes. We have had a lot of men here that have gotten involved in the kids program and that's been an impact. But just on a daily basis, again, for me, so much of it is disentangling myself from my concerns and slowing down and being present as everybody talks about now, but just engaging with kids more. I think this is going to have an impact on me in how I interact beyond my house with kids just remembering to not just say hi and give them a fist bump, but ask a few more questions and maybe make a time to get together and have some people really playing or doing something together on that kind of front. No, I think it's good. I love it. We need to play with more toys and build more things and create more connections. I mean, man, I love this episode. I love this conversation. So that's been this conversation on season one, episode three of The Chosen. On the next episode, we're going to have another AV club conversation. We're going to cover, you guessed it, season one, episode four, and that focuses a whole lot more on Peter and some of the things that were going on in Peter's life. That episode is called The Rock on which it is built. And so we'll get into that on episode 197 of the podcast. Thanks everyone for tuning in. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast Player of Choice or at biblegeeks.fm/196. You can also follow along with all of these conversations that we've had in previous guided studies. Download any of the resources that we have on our website there. And if you want to hear anything in an upcoming episode, maybe another Ask the Geeks section, reach out, get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you. And until next episode, everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [MUSIC PLAYING]