"Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” Luke 18:17 (ESV)
"Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger." Psalm 18:12 (ESV)
"They asked Jesus, "Do you hear what these children are saying?" "Yes," Jesus replied. 'Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.'" Matthew 21:16 (NLT)
While I find I am more fond of the phrase "the faith of a child" which, it turns out, is not in the Bible (the phrase of course, not the concept).
I had a friend tell me a story the other day which somehow brought this to mind. Not just the faith of a child but the idea of becoming a child to enter the kingdom of heaven, There are a lot more attributes of childhood that faith, there is also childlike courage, and childlike hope.
He said, "When I was only eight years old, I woke one morning before my family had awakened. It was cold out, frozen, and I was sitting in the living room watching morning cartoons. I heard my parents wake, and begin to get ready for the day.
Suddenly, I heard a loud creak and then "Snap!" a loud cracking noise from outside. I froze. Suddenly I was terrified. I had no idea where the noise had come from, I had no idea what had caused it. And it had been incredibly loud. In a panic I ran to the door of my parent's room. I started banging on the door, begging them to let me in. In a panic and near tears I began to pound on their door, shouting for them to let me in. Ultimately I dissolved into tears and in desperation forced their door open.
My parents were both inside their room, rapidly trying to dress. To this day, I do not understand why they had not responded to me, as they were both awake and already dressing, but when I finally made it into their room, they both shouted at me to leave and shoved me back out the door. Of course this was because they were uncomfortable at me being in the room before they were completely dressed for the day, but I feel my distress was obvious. They shut the door in front of me.
I sank to the floor in the hallway, sobbing. And finally decided that if my parents were not going to address the threat, I would. I crept around the corner of the hallway to face the living room, staring down my now threatening front door. When nothing moved, I cautiously approached the door.
I peeked through the curtains briefly, and saw nothing. Shoving my fear down and drawing up my courage, I threw the door open, dramatically opened the screen, and peered outside. I was greeted by a cardinal, singing on my front porch.
I later discovered that our porch had been expanding from water frozen inside the wood, and the sound had been the wood stretching and snapping. But at the time, I felt I was facing something incredibly terrifying."
I'm thinking that maybe we need to have more than the faith of a child, we also need to find in our hearts the courage of a child.
My friend, we'll call him Cameron.....Cam, had no proof of the existence of something frightening behind that door, but he believed it with all of his heart. His only evidence was hearing about it. As adults, we have heard about Jesus all the time, and yet we struggle to believe because we have no more proof than just "hearing about it." We want more proof before we believe. But "blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed" John 20:29 (NASB) Faith is believing in the unseen, the unknown. It's the meaning of "taking something on faith."
But an even more apt point is that Cam chose to act on what he believed in, regardless of proof. he found the courage to act in a knowledge vacuum. We are not called just to believe, we are called to repent and change out lives. We are not only to have faith in the absence of proof, we are also to act in that vacuum.
Maybe growing up really is overrated.
Matthew Robert Payne wrote an article on this same topic which was very interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment