Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who always seems to one-up you? No matter what you say, they offer up a more extreme example: Oh, you went horseback riding this weekend? Well I fell off a horse once and was stuck in the hospital for 8 weeks. They have always experienced something either far better or far worse than you have. Maybe we aren't this extreme, but all of us to some degree do make conversations about ourselves. In a sense, we think we are the more important part of the conversation at hand. Don't think you ever do this? Have you ever, even once, been waiting for someone to stop talking so that you could make your own point?  

I once read that conversation is not talking and listening, it's talking and waiting. How many times do we assume we know what the other person is going to say or determine that it's not as insightful as the thing we were about to say, so we don't listen: we wait for them to be done so we can have a turn.  

It's easy to gloss over Mark 9:30-37, thinking, "yeah, yeah, be humble," and then leave it at that. And yes, that's a part of it, but what does it really mean to put others first, to receive even a child into the fold? 

If you are ever around children, you know that it requires a lot of patience to put them first, to welcome them and to fully include them. While most of us understand a general sense of not hoarding wealth and power, we often forget about how we can use the power that we have to lift up others. One of the ways that we engage in group dynamics – and therefore power dynamics – is in conversation. I invite you to start noticing how often you are truly listening in a conversation and how often you are simply waiting in a conversation.  

How do you think God listens to us? In Mark 9 Jesus brings a child into his arms, and today God listens to our prayers lovingly and patiently, no matter how childish or whiny or privileged they may be from God's perspective. Jesus shows us what it means to welcome those with the least power. We are called to offer the same welcome to those in our midst whom we deem the least important or powerful: the ones who seemingly have nothing to offer us. So go out this week and use your power to welcome into conversation those whom in the past you would have ignored or brushed off.