Become Like Children

   “[U]nless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” – [Matthew 18:3]  Wow!  That is pretty stark.  We need to “become like children” or we “will not enter the kingdom of heaven”!  This sounds scary and impossible.  We obviously cannot go back in time to be children.  We have to become “like children”, which is still hard to comprehend.

   Indeed, it is hard to comprehend that we are sons and daughters of God.  How can we, fallen beings, be sons and daughters of a perfect God?  Well, it is most assuredly not because of us.  We have failed and most oftentimes, we fail before we even leave the house in the morning.  It simply has to be that God is the one keeping us as His sons and daughters.  We fail too often to maintain ourselves as His sons and daughters.

   When the Father looks at you, He sees Jesus.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.  And we are to love the Father as Jesus does; only, we cannot.  We have to have the Holy Spirit dwell within us to do so.  In order to love the Father as Jesus, we need to be as close to Jesus as we can.  We invite Him into our lives, into our very being so that He can love the Father through and with us.  Truly, then we can love the Father “on earth as it is in Heaven”.

   One aspect in children we commonly forget about and many times disregard or dislike, is their simplicity.  It is simple to be a child.  Someone else is taking care of you.  Someone else carries much of the responsibilities for your well-being.  A child simply stays within the bounds of their parents.  They bear the burden for the child’s well-being.

   And so it should be for us.  The Father is responsible for us.  Simply relying upon Him to carry the responsibilities for our well-being is what we should do as His children.  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?” – [Matthew 6:25-26]

   Jesus, stay with us.  Send us Your Holy Spirit that we might cry out Abba and live within us so that we might love the Father as Our Father on earth as You do in Heaven.  Amen.