God, why can't you just spell every answer to every question out with the clouds in the sky?
I'd pray my way into oblivion at which point I'd reach a phase of forgetting what I was praying about in the first place. I'd shake my fist skyward and pout my lip, impatient with the world and angry at God (I can be quite the five year old sometimes).
Until, by His grace that holds my messy life together, I stumbled my way into some sort of understanding.
Life doesn't always work out how we imagine it will, and God hardly works on our timeline. Besides, in letting us live our way into answers God is allowing us to experience rich happenings that increase our delight and cause us to marvel in wonderment at the God of love who works all things for good.
Not knowing all of the answers to life's questions, whether simple or complex, increases our dependence on God. It grows our patience. It forces us to reach out and grab His hand.
Arms flailing wild, in grasping for answers we find God.
Child, walk with me. Let me lead you where your trust is without borders.
Lately I've been dwelling on what it means to have a child-like spirit. I've been asking this question: what does it look like to 'become like little children' in order to experience the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18)?
When it comes to this question, I believe there are various answers. Some are outlined in the Bible; others I'm still living my way into.
When we examine the scriptures, we see that Jesus is outlining the concept of humility. His followers ask, 'Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven' (v 1), and in response Christ draws a child to Him and presents him (or her) as an exemplary picture of what is means to be the greatest: it is found in being the least.
'So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven' (v 4).
The richness of Christ, the fullness of the kingdom, is found in humility.
The Scriptures present us with a concept to strive for, and our life experiences present us the various forms this concept can take. Humility comes in multitudes of shapes and sizes.
Though clearly, according to Jesus, it can come in tiny packages. How much we can learn from the little ones of this world!
Yesterday while I was at work I had an interaction with a customer that melted my heart. As I was standing at the cash register in somewhat of a daze, I suddenly saw a blue Bible emerge as two little hands attempted to thrust it onto the check-out counter. Peering over the counter was a girl hardly older than four or five, strawberry-blond hair falling out of an imperfect ponytail and chocolate smeared across her face.
Hair a mess and outfit rumpled, her appearance was the last priority on her mind. She just really wanted that Bible.
'Dat's my first Bible. I just started to read, and I like reading that'.
'That's exciting, what made you pick this one?'
'I don't like pink, but I like blue. So I picked it'.
I wanted to tell her to keep on defying those gender stereotypes, but I refrained. She seemed to be defining her culture for herself just fine on her own.
As I scanned her purchase her parents, who had been browsing items at a display just a few inches away, walked over to pay for the Bible. Upon seeing the girl's father I realized that the two had been running around in the store earlier playing hide and seek while waiting for the mom to complete her shopping.
And for whatever reason, the little girl felt like bringing this up in conversation: 'Next time we play hide-and-seek, you should come too'.
Smiling, I responded that I might just have to do that.
As she waltzed out of the store, blue Bible in hand, the little sweet thing had no idea how much her entire demeanor reflected the heart of God, especially with those words: 'You should come too'.
The thing is, it's hard to love people. It's hard to reach out with a welcoming hand and say from a genuine place, 'You should come too'. It's not easy to accept those that are different from us, those that we take issue with, or simply those. It's hard to be welcoming, hard to embrace the lives of others for the sake of love.
As we grow up we begin to draw boundaries, lines and circles and groups and cliques. We marginalize those of different social statuses, women, children, and many others, hardly stopping to think that our pride may be getting in the way of us loving other people.
We are quick to judge and slow to love.
We get wrapped up in callings and responsibilities and purposes and accomplishments, which aren't bad in and of themselves but can too easily get in the way of what matters: loving other people. Even in regards to Jesus, we begin to glean from the rich experience of walking with God and all of a sudden we forget that such an experience isn't meant to be kept a secret. The love of Christ isn't meant to be hoarded, meant to be kept to ourselves so that we can be fattened up with this heavenly love.
We are called into relationship with God so that we can spend our lives for the sake of love. We are called to be sons and daughters of love so that we can welcome others into His light, into His kingdom experience in which Heaven collides with earth.
When that little girl, hair a mess and face hardly food-free, invited me to 'come too', she wasn't thinking of herself. She wasn't thinking of anything but rather she acted out the very essence that her being knew to be true: she is made to love and be loved.
In humility, she looked up at me and saw the face of another human being. No reservations, no hesitations, no thoughts about how it might be regarded or judged, she extended an invitation simply because love.
Humility wasn't even a virtue that she was trying to obtain in that moment. It was a virtue that was simply a part of who she was. Humility was at her core, because judgment, whether living in fear of it or extending it onto other people, was far from her.
As I looked at her, all I could do was desire for such a demeanor.
Too often do I close myself off, shut myself down, turn the other way or refuse to step out of my comfort zone merely in order to avoid having to love another person. We all do. Oftentimes we judge who can or can't be a part of something, who is or isn't invited to this or that. We decide who is worth loving and who is just too much work.
But that's a problem, because Jesus doesn't tell us who we can and can't love. God doesn't ask us to love some people and to withhold love from others.
Except that we all do this. We all draw circles in the air, lines in the sand, boxes and cliques and groups and excuse me, but you can't sit with us. Which, oddly enough sounds a lot like being in middle school. I'd argue though that this sort of mindset hardly stops in the eighth grade. As grown-ups (though I'm hardly a grown-up) we do this too, because we like forming community for our sake. We like to surround ourselves with people that will lift us up, which isn't bad except for when our mindset turns to one of exclusion, when we forget the point of community at all.
Community isn't meant to exist for the sake of ourselves. Community within the realm of Christianity is meant to exist for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of serving one another and fellowshipping together so that kingdom purposes can be fulfilled.
It's easy to forget that Jesus lived a life of inclusion. Yes, He had His close-knit friends, but He hardly excluded other people from His life. When it comes to serving other people, the kingdom of love is inclusive in the best way, but we easily forget this, myself included. The next time you are tempted to do this, tempted to reject rather than accept, tempted to deny rather than invite, stop and think: humility calls me to further the kingdom-not limit it. Humility calls me to serve, calls me to love.
This is partly I think what it means to be child-like. It means being humble, arms and heart open wide, so that other people feel welcome and loved, accepted and cherished.
