There are a few Bible verses that have always bothered me. You can probably figure out which one I am going to refer to in this article by its title. What frustrates me about this verse is that I don’t know what to do with it. Tell me to love my neighbor as myself and all kinds of images of how I could act differently flash through my mind. But…
“And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” - Matthew 18:3 (NIV)
I can’t work up a single image of what that might look like if I tried to live it out. I can much more easily identify with what Paul said in 1 Corinthians – “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” Yeah, I’ve grown up and know how to act and think like a man. I can figure my way through things. But…
Jesus said that if I am going to inherit the Kingdom I have to change and be like a little child. [Note that he did not say, “Become childish.”] In the midst of the life changes I am going through right now I had a flash of what this might mean.
I saw in my mind’s eye a 1-year-old child standing next to the coffee table with his mother’s outstretched hand encouraging him to let go and take the few steps to come to her. I realized because of the joy and excitement that I saw on this child’s face that he was not thinking, “I can’t do this. I tried yesterday and fell 3 times.” To this child it makes no difference whether he has “failed” 3, or 5, or 7, or a dozen times. You see little children do not have a cognizant history. They just live in the present!
Now I, on the other hand, cannot forget all of the past attempts I made that did not turn out exactly as I had hoped. I am so mature that I do not have to fall on my face 5 times before I figure out I had best not try something again. After all, I have put away childish things.
But then, if little children acted like me they would never learn to walk, or run, or leap.
Maybe I need to change! Maybe I need to become like a little child. Is it possible that my Father would encourage me to step out without remembering all the previous tumbles I made to the floor? Might I actually learn to walk in him or maybe even run and leap, if I stopped remembering my “failures” in the past and lived in the present?
Do I need, as The Message suggests, to “return to square one, and start over like” a little child?
I am beginning to get a picture in my mind of just how that might look. Are you?