Let The little Children Come To Me

 

WED Evening Prayer Reflection 021021 (Mark 10: 13-16)

“People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” Mark 10: 13-16. I am fascinated by the way Jesus talks about the little ones. In this particular passage in Mark 10, Jesus is indeed talking about real children, the little ones literally but then he says that we should receive the Kingdom of God like a little child. There is something so innocent about children. They accept easily, and I think they can teach us a lot about faith. For example, children have confidence that anytime their parents can defeat even dragons. They believe there is true safety in the hands of parents. Obviously, Jesus can see how grown-ups have a harder time to accept the Kingdom of God in such simple terms. We, adults enjoy a complicated route looking for explanation even of mysteries [meaning what is hard for earthly dwellers to comprehend], but as Jesus pointed out, those who are most humble and self-denying are the ones Jesus called little ones and telling us in earlier chapter to welcome them (Mark 9:37).

I don’t think the Jesus’ goal was to discourage reasoning and questioning matters of our faith by accepting things at face value, but the goal was rather, to have an open mind, to expect to be surprised by inexplicable mysteries. I was recently reading about a Dominican nun who talked about the darkness of faith. She did not experience her faith vividly, there was no miracles associated with her calling, but she simply said: I believe; I want to believe, Lord help me believe! That’s the faith of a child! I think Jesus was talking about such attitude as that of a child. My Bible commentator wrote about these words of Jesus to children as an encouragement, not only to little children to give themselves to Christ when they are very young, but also, to grown-up people, who are conscious of their weaknesses and childishness, and of being helpless and useless, with many infirmities, like little children.

These kids were brought by the parents to get Jesus’ blessing since they believed it would do good to their souls. It appears that Jesus disciples were trying to dismiss them. This made me think about how much we dismiss childlike people, we think they know nothing, we think they are not as capable or as eloquent as us. There may be many other reasons we dismiss people. The disciples also must have had their own reasons to dismiss the kids. But Jesus disagreed: “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them” Looking at the qualities of children, Jesus told everyone that without these childlike qualities, you can’t enter the Kingdom of God. Yes, Jesus welcomed them. I couldn’t help it but reexamine my own attitudes because there is no denying that we all do a lot of dismissing in real life. Unless you tell me, speak for yourself sir! Perhaps, those who are annoying to us, those whose values and dispositions are simply hard to live with. What would Jesus do? Would Jesus welcome them for their “being” childlike? We need to have a child-like attitude, to be light hearted, trusting God and joyful. Such attitude would make an impact anywhere.

Be part of these little ones by treating them well! It would be clever for us to ask Jesus to come and live within us so we can spot “child-like” persons and not dismiss them like Jesus’ disciples did. Lord help us!

Amen.