Matthew 19:14 (ESV) “but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
As any father will tell you... holding our kids in our arms when they are little, creates a lifetime memory of that moment. It captures the strength of our love for them, of the pure joy and happiness without any guile that cannot be duplicated or replaced. I still remember holding each of my three children at different times in their lives, the look on their tiny faces of complete trust, love and contentment to just be held by their daddy. It warms me still to this day... even as I write this.
As parents, we would never just walk away from our little ones, never allow them to come to harm from a stranger or misplace them, we are careful to cherish and hold and cuddle and coo and wrap them up as the precious and irreplaceable gifts of life they are.
As kids once ourselves we can remember the simple “joys of our innocence. The days and years of not having to worry about our lives, our mortgages or the price of gas. We just took each day as it came, anxious to get up and explore and learn and live and grow with our families and friends and neighbors. “Those were the days” ... we say.
I believe when we choose to simply trust God at his word, we re-experience both the profound love and peace of being comforted by our “daddy” (Abba) father in Heaven, and the innocence of living life today, not concerned or worried for tomorrow.
It’s Jesus himself who reminds us to just follow His father along with him, like we did as kids. Sort of like a toddler would, full of simple innocence and complete trust as to the motives and nature of our heavenly father.It’s really only when we allow ourselves to revert to such a childlike state of being, that we truly begin to experience the Kingdom of God for ourselves.
So, it’s no surprise that when we continue to try to live our lives as “adults” we live with such frustration and fear and exhaustion that we often just settle for trying to simply exist. We rise slightly nauseous each morning with the fears of the day immediately attacking our minds and robbing us of our happiness. We live off balance from the moment we awake until we drop back into our beds in a state of sheer exhaustion, hopeful “some day” things will change.
When you stop to think about this... for most of us... it’s truly a huge effort to even gather a smile for life, or to muster up sincere affection for our loved ones or to take the time to genuinely compliment someone at work. After all, we've spent everything we have just in the struggle to constantly push back the darkness and despair that comes at us from every side.
Information is always interrupting us, forcing us to figure out how, when, why we might somehow cope with all of the terrible and miserable news of our world. I mean with the 24/7/365 news alerts about the onslaught of economic collapse, global warming, natural disasters or the latest research about our kids spiraling Moral decline. It’s killing us. It’s strangling our hope, and our love and our joy and it’s relentless, insidious and oh so cerebral. It hints to us, that life is really all up to us to figure out and solve and fix... but we can’t.
What’s the solution then ?
Look to the little ones... they hold the secret of living life well in their chubby little hands. Let go, and Let God. It’s that simple and it’s that profound. I dare you… I did. And it saved my life... Just like Jesus said it would.
