Thought for the Week: Be like a child
Roland Carn reflects on whether there are 'childish things' that we should not put away as we grow older
Over a year ago I watched, fascinated, new-born Aidan and his grandmother getting to know each other; without language, copying each other, looking into each others’ eyes and laughing together.
Yesterday, I watched baby Logan and his slightly older cousin Aidan struggle to get to know each other, with no language and no rules, in an overwhelming family gathering.
About 2,000BC, so we are told, the Ten Commandments were carved in stone. Four thousand years later you have only to pick up a newspaper, or watch television, to see that we break them every day. We are no nearer to the kingdom of heaven than when Jesus said:
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.
- Matthew 18: 3–5
Small children pay deep and studied attention to conversational exchange and cooperating, while developing an independent personality. Perhaps when ‘I became a man’ I should not have put away this childish thing and so lost the kingdom of heaven.
This is about gestures, choice of words and sentence structure, using facial expressions, looking for and using body language, chatting together, negotiating, organising and building the network of relationships that is our community.
Bring the whole of your life under the ordering of the spirit of Christ. Are you open to the healing power of God’s love? Cherish that of God within you, so that this love may grow in you and guide you. Let your worship and your daily life enrich each other. Treasure your experience of God, however it comes to you. Remember that Christianity is not a notion but a way.
- Advices & queries 2
The ‘way’ is paying attention to the minutiae of our interactions with each other in the trivia of daily life. This, it seems to me, is the key to living our testimonies on integrity, on equality, on justice, on peace and on global warming.
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