Wisdom of a Little Girl

My friends' 20-month-old daughter has recently been learning how to use the small wooden stool in the kitchen. For us, it's just a little boost to get to the highest shelves, but for her, it nearly doubles her effective reach so that she can grab grapes out of the bowl on the table or get into any variety of things she shouldn't be into. I was doing dishes at the sink the other day, when she pulled the stool over to the sink and placed it between my feet and the counter. Then she climbed up on it, right in front of me, stuck her hands in the sink and started washing dishes with me. She's a very smart little girl. So, we cleaned the rest of the dishes together, taking turns with the sponge and me helping more with anything that required serious scrubbing.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, "Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; they get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble." (NLV)

This little girl was teaching me something very important about the value of doing things together. Now, we certainly didn't accomplish more dish washing together than I would have done alone, nor did we do it faster or even better. Although, one cup covered in smiley faces did get washed a half dozen times! But we did accomplish something MORE together. We learned about each other, about sharing, about working, about being a team and about depending on one another. For those moments, we shared our lives together on equal ground. We were both just a couple of dishwashers, cleaning up the mess we had made earlier.