He Cannot Bear A Crowd

You have watched it happen four or five times now.

The family gets somewhere, and there is noise and there are people and there is a lot of everything, and within about twenty minutes your grandson has gone somewhere behind his mother and is not coming out.

And what happens next is the part you find hardest. Everybody deals with it. His parents are patient and they know what they are doing and they do not need advice from you.

And you stand there. Useful for nothing, with your hands in your pockets, in a family that is not yours to run.

That is the actual subject of this article, and it is not the boy. He is fine. He is being looked after by people who love him.

It is you. Because you have something to give and no way to give it, and after four or five of these you have started to hang back at the edge of family days, which everybody has probably interpreted as tiredness.

There is a job in that day that nobody has taken. I want to show it to you, and then I want you to ask for it, because nobody is going to hand it to you.

He took them up in his arms

There is a moment in Mark where the crowd is the problem, and what Christ does with it is the whole of what I want to give you.

And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:16, King James Version)

You have a pattern in the written word for what to do with one child in the middle of a crowd, and no version of it has ever once required authority over the household he belongs to. Mark 10:16 has Him taking them up and putting His hands on them rather than addressing the crowd about them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows an older man his own job inside somebody else's day.

Read what happens just before that verse, because it is the crowd that sets it up. The disciples were turning children away. There were too many people and not enough time and the children were an interruption.

And He does not fix the crowd. He does not reorganize the day or lecture anybody about how children should be handled. He takes the individual child out of the press of people and does one specific thing with him.

You are able to take one child out of the press rather than fix anything about the day, and doing one small thing has never once been a smaller contribution than managing the whole of it. It is written that He took them up in His arms rather than instructing the crowd, which is why the intervention is individual, and the Spirit of God is what makes that available to a man with no standing in the room.

And notice how physical it is. Took them up. Put his hands upon them. This is not a word of encouragement across a room. It is a body, close, and a hand, and a small person removed from the middle of something.

That is a thing a grandfather can do and almost nobody else in a busy family day is free to.

You are the one person in that room with nothing else to do, and that has never once been a description of a man who is not needed. The Holy Spirit is the one who reframes an idle pair of hands as the only free pair in the house, and Mark 10 has the crowd going on around the whole exchange.

Nobody hands out that job

Now the practical part, and it is about why this has not happened by itself.

His parents are not going to ask you. Not because they do not want the help. Because they are entirely occupied, and because asking you would feel to them like imposing on their father, and because in the moment nobody has any spare capacity for organizing anybody.

So the job sits there, unclaimed, four or five times a year, while you stand at the edge with your hands in your pockets.

You are able to claim a job nobody thought to offer you, and asking for it has never once been you taking over anything. The Spirit of God is what moves a man to speak in a family where he has learned to wait, and Mark 10:16 has Him acting without waiting for the disciples to arrange it.

And here is the second reason it has not happened, which is about you. In the moment, when it is happening, you cannot offer. It is too late by then. The boy is already behind his mother, everybody is already managing it, and a man stepping in at that point is another thing to be managed.

Which means the offer has to happen before the day. That is the whole mechanism of this article.

You are able to say it beforehand rather than in the moment, and offering early has never once been you assuming the worst about the day. It is written that He took the child up and blessed him in the middle of a crowd, and the Holy Spirit is the one who prompts a plain sentence in a man a week ahead of time.

And there is one more thing to get right, which is what you actually offer. Not to help. Help is vague and puts the work of assigning it back on them.

Offer the specific thing: if it gets too much for him on Saturday, I will take him outside and sit with him, and you will not have to ask.

Offer it, before the day

So here is the assignment.

Offer to be the one who takes him out of the crowd. And say it to his parents before the day.

Say it to whichever parent is easier, on the phone or in a doorway, days ahead, in one sentence. And make it concrete: on Saturday, if it gets too much for him, I will take him out to the yard and sit with him. Just so you know somebody has got that.

You are able to say one concrete sentence in advance, and offering the specific thing has never once been the same thing as saying you know better. Mark 10:16 has Him doing one physical thing with one child, and the Spirit of God is with a man making a phone call on a Wednesday about a Saturday.

Then, and this is the harder half, do it without checking. When Saturday comes and it starts, do not look at his mother for permission. That is what the sentence on Wednesday was for. Stand up, and say to the boy: come on, let us go and look at something.

You are able to act on Saturday because you spoke on Wednesday, and moving without asking again has never once been you overstepping. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives an older man the plainness to stand up in a busy room, and Mark 10 has a crowd continuing while one child is taken out of it.

And when you have got him outside, do not work on him. Do not ask what is wrong, do not talk about the noise, and do not tell him it is all right. Sit on a wall. Show him something. Be extremely boring on purpose.

Boring is the entire medicine here, and nobody else in that family can do it, because nobody else in that family is off the clock.