Layla

      There's an adorable little girl in the church classroom that I help with twice a month. She has big, brown eyes and a beautiful smile. Today she had on a pink jumpsuit and little penguin earrings. She's all of six years old with the mind of a fifteen year-old.
      One day the classroom of 40 kindergartners and first graders was jam-packed, and I was all alone with another youth volunteer. As little girls and boys ran wild throughout the room, all control was totally lost. One group that formed was more like a clique than anything else, and Layla was in it. As I neared the fighting girls and boys, I heard phrases like, "Well, she stole my boyfriend!"
      Remember, these kids are six years old (at the oldest- some of them are five.)
      "What's the matter?" I asked, my mind going a million miles an hour trying to decide how to occupy all of the kids and solve all of the problems at once.
      "She stole my boyfriend!" Layla accused, pointing at another girl.
      "NO! No, I didn't!" the girl retorted.
      "Well, I saw her kissing a boy at school!" Layla fought back, her braids flailing.
      The other girl looked embarrassed, but denied ever having done such a thing.
      "Woah, woah, woah, woah," I interrupted the argument.
      How to begin?
      "You all are six years old!" I cried, at a loss for words. (As if reminding them of their age was going to help anything at all.) "You don't need to think about things like this for a good ten years!"
      It was no use. I knew that their entire schools must be made up of entire classrooms of itty-bitty couples who fought over each other all of the time. Not only was the thought frightening, but I was completely floored. These kids were creating problems for themselves. They were concerned with things that they shouldn't even know about at the tender age of six, and only I could understand that. There was no way to express it to them.
     
      I'm a professional worrywart. God has been trying and trying to get that out of me, yet I continue to worry.
      "But, God, You don't understand. I have problems!"

      The thought of some of the things I've worried about makes me laugh now. If God sees things that I worry about from the same perspective through which I see Layla's problems, He must simply smile and say, 

      "You know, darling, you're only creating your own problems. If you just left everything in My hands, you'd never worry again."  

      All we need to do is trust. That's all He asks, and it's all He needs. 

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?" Luke 12:25-26