"Let the children come to me..."
-- Mark 10
There is a vast difference between being childlike
and being childish.
Mark's gospel tends to be rapid fire. (We pick this up with all the "immediately's" scattered throughout.) In Luke's telling of this same story, he mentions that just before Jesus said, "Let the children come to me..," the disciples had been arguing over which of them was greatest.
Stop for a moment. Ponder that.
Yes, they had just come back from doing some pretty incredible things. All, by the way, because Jesus had empowered them. However, they somehow forgot this fact. They had also somehow suddenly forgotten who it was who calmed storms, walked on water, healed the blind and deaf and ran demons off into pigs.
It would be like sitting in a room with a couple friends, and Albert Einstein, and arguing which of you was smartest; or jogging along at Lake Hefner with some buddies, and Usain Bolt, and arguing who was the fastest. If we multiply these examples by 100 or 1,000 we still fall short of the silliness of the argument.
Let's take it up a notch. The disciples - who were an odd roundup of former fishermen, tax-collectors, etc. - stood in front of the ONE who spoke the word, and what was not became what is (John 1:1-4). They stood before the Light and Giver of Life and argued about which of them was the greatest!
Childish.
My guess is that Peter, James and John were right in the middle of the argument. They probably even played the Transfiguration Card at some point: "If you had only seen what I saw... but Jesus said I can't tell you. You probably wouldn't be able to handle it."
Then Jesus points to a child and says, "The Kingdom of God is for the childlike," (my rough transliteration).
True faith is childlike... it is not childish.
Childish faith is self-focused... Childlike faith is focused on Christ.
Childish faith is arrogant (and usually ignorantly so)... Childlike faith is humble.
Childish faith wants to be served... Childlike faith serves.
Childish faith argues... Childlike faith believes.
Childish faith is not... Childlike faith is.
The foremost quality of childlike-ness is this: A person who is childlike understands that he or she is a child. We are childlike when we love and receive love. We are childlike when we sense we are pleasing to God, not because of something we do, but simply because we are his.
(It is sad to say, but we live in a culture and time that robs the childlike-ness from children due to horrible or absent parents, cultural intrusion, etc. But that is a discussion for another time.)
For now our quest is to become as children; because that is what we are... Children of God.
God, I come to you as a child, help me to remain childlike and never childish...
For now...
D
