“Truly, I say to you,
unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.”[1]
“Truly, I say to you,
whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”[2]
Every once in a while I find myself entering into a fresh
understanding of what it means to be the little child who enters the kingdom of
heaven. With a focus on adults in my church ministry and children in our daycare,
I have had many personal experiences of the differences between the way adults
and children handle life. Today one of those differences stood out as the
obvious work of God to bring me to rest like a child in his everlasting love.
My time with God began with the awareness of another "like a child" lesson. In this
case, it was the way children do not spend time trying to figure out what I am
doing to complete a project. They only care that I am doing it, and wish they
could have it yesterday.
Not only do children give little thought to how a plan is
completed, but they do not have the capacity to comprehend all the things that
a parent or caregiver has to think about in order to pull off an event, an
outing, or a project. It’s not just that they don’t want to think about it, but
that they simply don’t.
In our present case, the children left our daycare on Friday
knowing that we were in the middle of putting down paving stones in one of
their play areas, and wondering when they could regain access to their little
playhouse. They had no idea what steps we were following to complete the
project, and smile in anticipation of the children coming back to discover the
changes. Neither did they need to know any of these things in order to make
their daily visits to our backyard and enjoy what we had done. After all, they
are the children in this story. It’s not their job.
The children also left on Friday knowing that we were
preparing a place under our big Maple tree where they could safely play in an
area that would feel very much like a forest oasis. However, they had no idea
how long we had thought of doing this, how long we had waited because of the
necessity of doing other projects first, and what we hoped to get done during
the few days they were away. When we told them this would soon be their
new play-space, they had only one question: “Tomorrow?”
The lesson for me was that, if I was more childlike in my
faith, I would quickly follow God where he was leading, rather than wasting
time trying to figure out how he could possibly do what he says he will do. He
has God-sized thoughts about the big stuff, particularly how he will accomplish
all he has promised. I don’t need to know how he will do something to know that
he will do something.
Childlike faith should be able to skip along behind Jesus
in joyful anticipation that this great big wonderful God of ours will have no
problem doing what he said. Not only can we not imagine how, but childlike
faith wouldn't actually care to know. Somehow, we would be too busy enjoying the
moment, listening to God's joyful singing, filling up our cups with his joy,
delighting in the waterfall of his love splashing all over our hearts, and
anticipating tomorrow's portion of mercies that are new every morning.
After all, if he is God, and I am not, then I might as well
let him concern himself with the big stuff that is far beyond my capacity to
even imagine, and set my heart to the child-duty of delighting myself in the
Lord Jesus so that I can experience the desires of my heart at the moment,[3] while knowing my Father is setting the stage for
more of the same tomorrow.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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