Child's Play

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Matthew 18:3
And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 11:2
2He said to them, "When you pray, say:
" 'Father,hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.

What implications are there when we call God Our Father? If you go back to the original translation and look at the word Abba you will find that it was the very intimate and familiar way of addressing your father, equivalent to our "daddy". Jesus was teaching us to look up to God as a father figure.

In Matthew 18:3 Jesus spells out that we are to be child like. Why? Jesus recognized that children believe their parents implicitly (unless they are given a reason not to). God is faithful and just, he has never given us a reason to doubt him. Therefore, Jesus is showing us that we should place our trust, in God without reservation.

Jesus also wants us to realize that, within our relationship, God's perspective is that of an adult and our perspective is that of a child. A child asks for things thinking that they "need": The candy bar, the tootsie roll, the junk food at dinner time. As a loving parent we sometimes have to say no to things that our kids say they "need" because we understand that it is not best for them, or we can tell that this "need" is actually a want. In the same way that we have a more mature view of our children's needs than they do, so God has a perfect view of what we need.

Like a child crying for candy, sometimes we persist in asking for things that we want and get mad when the answer from God is no. We forget that God knows what we need and provides for us. We are not coming to Him as an obedient child when we turn away because our prayers go unanswered. What kind of faith is it we display when we believe only when we get our way?

God also calls us to be child-like in our innocence. When we look at our children we see minds that have not yet been exposed to the evils of the world. We become protective when our babies are born and try to help them hold onto their innocence as long as possible. We try to monitor what our children see and hear, we screen those that they come into contact with, we do all that we can to keep our children pure. God desires that we remain pure as well. He has wiped away sin, he has made us new, we are born again in his eyes. When God sees us, he sees a new born. So we must protect ourselves by guarding against what we hear, view, whom we spend our time with. We are God's Children and he wants us to remain pure.