God's Girl Princesses - Dresses Not Required!

Jesus loves us, this I know, for the Bible tells us so......

We can read about that here: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 1 John 3:1

And here: "Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you."  Psalm 63:3 

And so many other wonderful places in the Holy Bible which I know to be true! But you get the point! It's a beautiful thing to be loved by Jesus and with no qualifiers or pressure to perform. In God' world, there's none of "He loves me only when I'm behaving nicely" or "only when I look my best" or "only when I'm doing good deeds." Or only when I'm wearing a princess tutu!

This past weekend, we had some new princess friends show up to class a bit late, and there were some glitches and snafus in the dress department. We had already started and we weren't fully capable of helping solve the problem as we were already in teaching/crowd control mode. One of the new princesses couldn't seem to find a dress to wear that worked for her. She was new; she was feeling shy and without a princess dress to wear like all the other girls, well, that was just too much for her little self to handle and I don't blame her! She started to sniffle and tear up and we weren't quite sure what to do! At the onset of the tears, we decided then to stop the class and take advantage of a perfect teaching opportunity for all the little princesses about God's love for us and also importantly about modeling His loving kindness. Afterall, we have been learning the Fruits of the Holy Spirit and this was potentially an opportunity to review a whole bunch of them - love, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness...

We told the princesses first, God loves us no matter what, whether we are wearing a princess tutu or not, although don't get us wrong, princess tutus are a blast! Then we asked them, "Do you think you have to wear a princess dress to be God's princess?" This is where we held our breath, but they all heartily shook their heads side to side, "NO! We don't have to wear a princess dress to be God's princess!" Phew. Then we explained about the princess who was unable to wear a dress that day and asked, "Would you be willing to return to your street clothes for class today so this new little princess feels comfortable joining our group?" Then we really held our breath waiting for their response thinking perhaps now one or two more princesses might get upset and pitch a fit because they don't want to take their tutu off!  This was the moment where we could be walking, talking, doing "1 John 3:18ers" which says, "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth."

And then a beautiful thing happened. One by one they all nodded yes, that would be fine, and started removing their beloved dresses and tutus (they wear leotards and tights under the dresses). I'm so pleased to report that from the smallest princess age 3 on up to the oldest one age 9, they all were more than happy to comply! Our new princess joined class in a more comfortable state and all was well, praise God. These are some awesome little ladies and we are so privileged to be able to work with them! So no, we do not have to wear a lovely, sparkly dress to be God's princess, but we sure do love to wear them when the time and circumstance is right!