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When we are on a long journey, perhaps across the country, I am always glad to have my wife beside me because my wife is an excellent navigator. She usually takes the first part of the journey because it is most familiar and therefore she doesn't need me to navigate - I am not a natural navigator, too easily distracted. I then take the second part because someone needs to read a map and my wife does it very well. Even so we sometimes get a little lost, especially when we near the end of the journey and have to navigate through the suburbs to our final destination (I also don't always pay attention to what she tells me. It's a nightmare scenario many wives will know).
"Why don't you stop and ask someone," my wife will ask.
"We'll find it soon," I usually reply with more stubborn determination than real conviction, knowing even as I speak that it is the wrong answer. My wife can be very patient, but what is it that makes a man so bent on carrying on driving rather than admit he is lost? We might have arrived earlier had I stopped and asked for help. Of course, what goes through your subconscious is a picture of the man you ask looking smug and saying, "So, your lost are you friend? Well let me see if I can make you feel even smaller than you already do by talking across you to the little lady with the map." It's never true and most people are more than happy to help but…
The problem is we like our independence and think of ourselves as sophisticated and in control. The passage reads:
Let the little children come to me, and do not
hinder them.
It was the independent and capable adults, the people who thought they were behind the wheel, who were in control who hindered the children. What is it that hinders you and me?
The truth is we are often too childish in our self-esteem to be childlike - especially in this age when celebrity is everything. This passage speaks of receiving:
I tell you the truth, anyone who will who will
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
Children are open and receptive and appreciate a gift when it is offered. Adults can be proud and defensive, looking for the price tag, looking for the catch - looking for some way of claiming credit. Finding a way to say they are, after all, worthy of the gift. But the kingdom of God can only be received as a gift. Earning it is tantamount to rejecting the good intentions of the giver - it is also impossible.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
When a man really gives up trying to make something
out of himself -- a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a
righteous or unrighteous man, ... when in the fullness of tasks, questions,
success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself
into the arms of God... then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That
is faith, and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.
The choice here is stark and real. Be childish and insist on finding your own way, or be childlike and gain the kingdom. May we come to him as little children this week and humbly receive all that he has for us. How could we hold back when all that he has for us is the kingdom of God?
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