The Will of God is revealed to the childlike

Jesus praised the Father for hiding His will for the world from the wise and learned and revealing it to the childlike (Matthew 11:25-27).

I always like it when Jesus refers to children and holds them up for us as examples.  Children are such a wonderful example of pure faith.  They trust, they believe, they’re guileless, they’re honest and loyal, they accept their powerlessness, they live in the now – at least until we teach them not to trust, to challenge, to scheme, to shade the truth, to divide their allegiances, to grasp and control, to fret about tomorrow. As we lose our innocence, we layer calluses of indifference and complications over our childlike nature.  We lose our understanding of the mysteries that Jesus says are revealed to the childlike as we believe in our own powers of self-determination and action.

In Luke (17:3) Jesus says, “anyone who does not welcome the reign of God like a child will never enter it.”  It’s clearly not a matter of being childish, but of being childlike. What’s so special about children that makes this revealed to them and not to the learned?

When my granddaughter Lily was about five years old, she and I went to the hardware store for something.  As we walked in, Lily immediately plugged her nose.  Of course the guy who was helping me find my part noticed her pinching her nose and asked her if something was wrong.  She replied, “It stinks in here!”  He gave a laugh and said, “Oh?  I don’t smell anything!”   I think it was probably all of the different materials, cleaners, and other sundries in such a small store that created a unique odor for her that was, to her, unpleasant. 

After we left the hardware store, she started talking to me while still holding her nose.  Lily started telling me that she learned in school that day that breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth was a way to calm down.  Then she got very silent for a few minutes; and out of the blue she said, “If we stop breathing, we go to Heaven.”  What simple statement of faith!  At her age she didn’t worry IF she’ll go to Heaven, she simply had enough confidence in the love of God the Father for her that she believed she will go to Heaven when she dies.

Children have an openness to trust and a keen way of grasping what we say and, more importantly, of grasping what we are.  Children know their parents, know their friends, more than they know about them.  They don’t study their parents or friends, they’re keenly perceptive about what the lives of their parents or friends convey to them.

In John (17: 13) Jesus tells us, “eternal life consists in this, to know you, Father, and to know the one you sent. To know you is different from knowing about you.”  The disciples’ first response to Jesus’ question, “who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16: 13) reveals what they knew about Jesus. Knowing about another is an intellectual process, while knowing another is more of an existential process.  It’s the way we know our parents and friends without studying them, but by living with them and interacting with them. 

I remember another day when I was watching Lily and some other children playing in a park.  They were playing as children do, with a little bit of running, a little bit of climbing on benches, and a lot of screaming with laughter mixed in.  I heard no arguing or disagreements on what to play or how to play that is sometimes the norm with older children and adults.  And when one of the smaller children about 2 or 3 years old fell and hurt herself, ALL of the other children stopped playing to attend to her needs and help her get over it!  In no time at all, she was laughing and playing with the rest of them as if nothing had happened.  What a testament to fulfilling the will of God to love our neighbor!

As our scientific knowledge, our success and our seemingly great accomplishments continue to expand, it seems God gets smaller and smaller.  The haughty, the proud, the wise, the learned simply aren’t enough like children to be able to receive God’s message of His will for us.  He wants to give it to us, but we’re too full of ourselves.  But as our own presumptuousness grows, God really never gets smaller.  In fact our true need for Him grows larger and larger to the point that there’s no room within our hearts for the gracious will of God.  We mustn’t ever be fooled by letting arrogance creep into our lives. Instead, we should strive to become childlike in our acceptance of our Lord.