Become Like Little Children

Today’s Reading: Matthew 18:1-9

A child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Do you think that is the answer the disciples expected to hear? With all the great people of the Bible---Noah, Moses, David, John the Baptist, the disciples, Paul, Jesus said that unless we change and become like little children we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I think that Jesus’ response may have been a bit of a shock to the disciples, so why did Jesus say this? When I think of how a little child behaves I think of what I have seen my children do. They believe God is who he says he is and can do anything and everything that they ask of him without question. I have noticed that when my children are sick or concerned about something they pray about it and then they are done with it---isn’t that how we all should be. Children just accept Jesus, they love him without question and they let him love them. I have also noticed that little children accept everyone, they don’t see the physical differences. I can think of a time when my daughter knew this little boy for a few years and never even acknowledge that he had a disability. I prepared myself for her questions, but they never came. I also remember a day not too long ago when we were watching Oprah….Shawn Cassidy was the guest and a lady in the audience was describing her experience of going to his concert when she was a teenager. Oprah responded by saying something to the effect of what did your parents say about you going to a white boy’s concert, everyone laughed and I will never forget my daughter looking at me and asking, “Is Oprah black?”. At first I thought she was joking, but when I looked at her I could tell she was really serious and I was elated---she did not even see color, she only saw a person, and that is what Jesus sees---a person, his child!

I want to see with the eyes of Jesus, and while the physical may not always be nice and neat, in the spiritual it should just be love. I heard a speaker once say to a group of teachers at a back to school luncheon to look at your new class list with the eyes of Jesus. Erase all you already know about these children and look at them for who they are to Jesus. I have never forgotten that and I am often reminded that people are who they are from their past experiences and if they have not experienced Jesus yet than how do we expect them to behave? My job is not to fix people, not to tell them how the should act, but to show them Jesus and let him mold them into what he wants them to be.

With a very powerful message Jesus explains to us just how important his children are to him in the next few verses. We have to be extremely careful about where we lead children. I may be an adult, but I have so much to learn from the faith of my children. The children in our lives watch us, they model their lives after the way that we live. So I have to ask myself…am I modeling Jesus to my children? Am I modeling Jesus to the world? Many times we don’t always evaluate ourselves, why?, well quite frankly it is not comfortable and it is much easier to see what others are doing wrong instead of ourselves. Isn’t self-evaluation what Jesus is teaching us in verses 8-10? Go back and read them again, what do you think? To me Jesus is saying take a good look at yourself, if you are not doing what I am telling you and you are allowing the things in your life to cause you to sin than do something about it---get rid of the problem, no matter what it is.

Have a self-evaluation day and in that day pay attention to everything that you do, the words you speak, the body language you use, the actions that you take, the time you spend, and people that you are with---look at all these, write things down, analysis your behavior and then compare it to that of Jesus, then make it better---ask Jesus to give you the words to say and to show you what to do. Take another day to observe a child, what will you find, what will you learn, do you think you might just see the fact of Jesus in the eyes of a child?