What’s something funny you remember about being a kid?
When I was a kid, I didn’t understand that you could use a debit card to withdraw cash from your bank account, so whenever my mom got “cash back” at the grocery store, I just thought we were getting free money. It never made sense to me that my mom didn’t get cash back every time we went to the store.
I mean, who wouldn’t want free money?
I’m sure you can think of a story from your childhood
that’s similar to mine.
So many things are different when you’re a kid.
In general, kids are silly, with silly fears and silly desires. They have wild imaginations and an insaitable need for snuggles and stories. They’re completely helpless and dependent on their parents.
But kids also feel deeply, and love deeply.
I’ll never forget the time we dropped my brother off at the airport for college when I was about 15 and my sister was 7. As we were walking back to the parking lot, a plane flew overhead. Little Elsie reached up to the sky with her arm outstretched toward the plane, threw back her head and let out the most pitiful, heartfelt wail I’d ever heard. Internally, I felt the same way. But I was too old to express it the way she did.
Too old that is, or too callused. Too afraid of what people thought. Too guarded. Too untrusting. Too hardened by life.
One of my favorite songs from Needtobreathe says it this way-
“Yeah, I know too much, I think I know my way around
Too smart to feel a heartbreak now, too old to let my safeguards down
And where’d the wonder go? Traded magic for a measured hope
Traded dreamin’ for a worn out road, I’m tired of bein’ in control
And it calls me to light in the by and by
I wanna see your heart in my younger eyes
I wanna hear your voice in the rain and wind
I wanna know it’s safe to be a child again.”
I want to know it’s safe to be a child again…. Don’t we all.
In Mark 10:14-15, Jesus says this-
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
According to these verses, who does the kingdom of God belong to?
Not kings, not intellectuals, not those in power or influence, not prophets, not priests, not musicians or artists, not the most well-spoken or the most well read, but children.
Children.
Childhood lasts for only a short window of our lifetimes, but it’s also what Jesus calls us to be- for eternity.
Most of the time when we think about being a child of God, we think about being helpless and in desperate need of God’s mercy and redemption. Which is true. We are absolutely helpless without the provision of our God. But it’s also more than that.
You see….children don’t really know that they’re helpless.
Children don’t know that without their Mom,
they wouldn’t have food to eat.
They just trust that she’ll bring them their next meal.
Children don’t know that if Dad didn’t go to work,
they wouldn’t have somewhere to lay their head.
They just trust that he’s gone for a reason every day,
and every night, they trust he’ll come back home.
Kids don’t have a clue that they’re incapable and dependent on adults for almost everything because they’re too full of wonder. They’re too full of delight. They’re too full of love.
But we lose that as we grow older.
Like Adam and Eve, alert to their nakedness, we become alert to our need for protection and provision. We become the adults that rush after kids, pulling them away from something dangerous, instead of the kid that is stumbling towards the danger, with eyes wide open in curiosity and wonder.
As we learn to do things on our own, we become independent.
And then we grow proud. We grow cynical. But we also grow, strangely, afraid. Not of dark basements and monsters under our beds, but of loving too deeply, trusting too much, and hoping too hard. Because as we grow up, people hurt us We learn that we can’t always trust that Mom will make our next meal or that Dad will come home at the end of the day. We find out the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows like the children’s books we grew up reading. Dreams in real life don’t always come true. So we lose our wonder. We lose our hope. Instead of shirking back from spiders on our walls, we build walls of our own.
I recently read an amazing book called “A Praying Life” by Paul E. Miller (which you can read a full review of on my instagram account). In it, Paul talks about learning to pray like a child. This means recognizing your desperate need for God and crying out to him in helplessness. But it also means trusting him as our Father, deeply and fully.
“Children are supremely confident of their parent’s love and power. Instinctively, they trust. They believe their parents want to do them good. If you know your parent loves and protects you, it fills your world with possibility. You just chatter away with what is on your heart. It works the same in the world of prayer. If you learn to pray, you learn to dream again. I say “again” because every child naturally dreams and hopes. To learn how to pray is to enter the world of a child, where all things are possible.” -Paul E. Miller
Being a child isn’t primarily about being helpless, but it’s about being hopeful, because children not only know how to depend-
They know how to DREAM.
Becoming like a child was the secret to the storytelling of well-known author, C.S. Lewis. Ruth Pitter, a good friend of Lewis, said this about him- “His whole life was oriented and motivated by an almost uniquely-persisting child’s sense of glory and of nightmare.”
Indeed, In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis wrote a dedication letter to his goddaughter in which he said “but someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I lose my sense of wonder, enchantment, hope and positivity.
I shelve my fairy tales and pull out my non-fiction books because fairy tales are shallow and silly. My mind is full of schedules and spreadsheets instead of dreams and desires. I let the heaviness of this world take away the sparkle and skip in my step.
Maybe you can relate.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Because we are God’s children, we have a living hope beyond this life. We have a dream- to live happily ever after with our true love in a magical kingdom far away- and guess what? It’s a dream that will come true! We don’t have to be cynical or guarded. We have a Father who loves us. We can trust him fully, and love him fully, without fear that he’ll break that trust.
We can marvel at fireflies and shooting stars.
We can become enchanted with God’s goodness.
Psalm 131:1-2 says this-
“My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.”
Are you like a child before your Maker?
Not only recognizing your helplessness, but recognizing the HOPE you have in Him? Do you concern yourself with great matters or have you calmed and quieted your heart before him, and learned to be content?
We think it’s easy to be a child… Getting clothed, fed, protected and cared for without having to do anything to earn it seems like a pretty sweet deal.
But it’s hard to be hopeful like a child. It’s hard to believe in a love that will not let you go.
I don’t know how you’ve gotten hurt as you’ve grown up, or what has caused you to put on the glasses of cynicism and doubt, but let Gods kindness cast out your fears.
“See what kind of love the Father has given us-that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1)
Like a child, you can enter into a new day with wonder and with hope. You can trust that your Father will provide for your needs. You can trust that he left for a reason, and that one day, he will come back.
And in the meantime-
You can dream.
You can hope.
You can read fairytales once more.
It is safe for you to be a child again.
“Let my past mean nothing, make it powerless- I am free like a river, I am free like a river.
All my hope unbroken, you’re my innocence. I am free like a river, I’m a child again.”
-Needtobreathe
When we live in a dark hopeless world Heaven seems like a fairytale. Jesus promised that he was going to prepare a place for us. He also said in the same passage that He would come back and take us there. We must decide to believe in child-like hope and faith so we will not be caught unprepared when he comes! Thanks for such an encouraging read.
That’s such a good point as many are growing cynical when it comes to the promise of his return. Thanks for pointing that out!
An old acquaintance at work came in bearing a detailed 4 page exhaustive support on following the Torah, the law , Hebrew and why we are all condemned by not faithfully following the law. At 5 years and 8 months , I trusted and began following Christ. I can still remember the magnitude and joy in my pre-elementary minds eye. I new the rock I firmly just planted on and thankfully, abiding in him, we need nothing else. Thanks for the reminder!