Several summers ago my granddaughters, ages 10 and 5, joined me for a weeklong Bible camp at a large university.
After morning classes and lunch, we donned our swimsuits, grabbed snacks, water, fun-in-the-sun gear and headed to the campus pool.
Maybe an hour later Big Sister asked permission to leave the pool and go to the bathroom. I asked if she remembered where it was in the nearby basketball gym, and she assured me she did.
Following other children leaving through the gate of the fence surrounding the pool, she waved back to us as she headed out.
A few minutes later she walked from the gym and back down the sidewalk to rejoin us in the pool.
She stood facing the gate in the chain link fence, staring — and staring.
Thinking perhaps there was a big red wasp on the gate, I waited for her to make a move.
When I asked if there was a wasp, she said there wasn’t — and still stood staring at the gate.
I called out, “Do you need some help?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“I’ll help her,” came a chirpy little voice from the far side of the pool.
Splashing mightily across the water, Little One crossed the pool, climbed out and made her way, dripping and hopscotching across the hot pool deck.
Arriving at the gate, she assessed for a short moment, then put her hand through the gate and lifted up the gate latch from the outside, and ushered Big Sister in.
I marveled.
Later that evening as we returned after dinner to our dorm room for the night, Little One was scratching her arms and legs from fresh mosquito bites inflicted during our walks across campus.
I offered a cold wet cloth to wash down the itches, but Big Sister went to her luggage and pulled out a first aid kit.
Peering intently at every itchy spot pointed out to her, she carefully ran an alcohol pad over each one, applied a dab of soothing cream, then covered with a tiny bandage.
I marveled.
Before long, Little One was looking like a patchwork doll, tiny arms and legs covered in a multitude of Dora the Explorer and the occasional Scooby Doo Band-Aids.
The look on my face must have shown the humor I saw in this, and Little One confidently assured me, “I’ll just sleep in them tonight and take them off in the morning. The itch will be gone by then.”
Sure enough, time and the careful ministrations of Big Sister wrought a remarkable cure, and all bandages were removed the following morning.
As we visited with fellow attendees that day, a lady who had met Big Sister but not Little One asked, “Are you girls sisters?”
Little One promptly replied, “Oh, yes. She takes care of me, and when she needs help, I help her.”
I marveled.
What a perfect example and description of a caring, symbiotic relationship.
“She takes care of me.”
Big Sister, with her well-equipped and handy first aid kit, and her compassionate heart to help Little One feel better.
“And when she needs help, I help her.”
Little One, with her eagerness to help and her innate ability to figure out and deal with the mechanics of a gate latch.
Solomon saw the benefits of such relationships.
In Ecclesiastes 4:9 and 10, he says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: if one falls down, his friend can help him up, but pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!”
So the teacher understood ... after many years of life — and so did two very young ladies.
“Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world ...
“Let them come to me, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
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