Our pastor’s son, Brandon, mentioned to me a while back that his sister Ashley had been imitating me during worship. When I sat a bit further back than normal on Easter Sunday, I noticed this same phenomenon.
I recognized the rhythms of her dance, the movement of her arms and hands. She was dancing my dance before the Lord.
It’s a great and awesome responsibility to be a role model for a young child. Jesus said “whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” Little children are born imitators–when they imitate me, do they see a walk of uprightness or do they stumble because of me?
It’s a sobering thought. Ashley watches and imitates every sway of my arms, every swish of my hips. She imitates me as I bow or kneel. When I twirl, so does she. So what does she learn as she imitates me?
Does she learn the greatness and worthiness of God as she imitates my worship? Does she see His love as we dance together? Does she follow a life of devotion to the King? Or does she see exhibition, inhibition, or insincerity? Do I put a stumbling block in the way of my little imitator, or am I letting this little one come unto Christ?
Lord, grant that I, like Paul, could say “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ.”