Unless you make a U-Turn!

Mat 18:1-15

1 At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, "Who gets the highest rank in God's kingdom?" 2 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, 3 and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. 4 Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. 5 What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me. 10" Watch that you don't treat a single one of these childlike believers arrogantly. You realize, don't you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven? 12 "Look at it this way. If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders off, doesn't he leave the ninety- nine and go after the one? 13 And if he finds it, doesn't he make far more over it than over the ninety- nine who stay put? 14 Your Father in heaven feels the same way. He doesn't want to lose even one of these simple believers.

Food for thought

Here is a very revealing question, followed by a very revealing answer. The disciples asked who was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus took a child and said that unless they turned and became as this little child, they would not get into the Kingdom at all. The question of the disciples was: "Who will be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?" and the very fact that they asked that question showed that they had no idea at all what the Kingdom of Heaven was. Jesus said, "Unless you turn." He was warning them that they were going in completely the wrong direction, away from the Kingdom of Heaven and not towards it.

In life it is all a question of what a wo/man is aiming at; if s/he is aiming at the fulfilment of personal ambition, the acquisition of personal power, the enjoyment of personal prestige, the exaltation of self, s/he is aiming at precisely the opposite of the Kingdom of Heaven. So long as a wo/man considers his or her own self as the most important thing in the world, his / her back is turned to the Kingdom; if s/he wants ever to reach the Kingdom, s/he must turn round and face in the opposite direction.

Jesus took a child and said that in a child we see the characteristics which should mark the wo/man of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, as we grow older, many of us aren't growing towards the Kingdom of heaven, but away from it; the more we grow up, the less we become childlike; and the more unchildlike we become the further away from heaven we get.

Many of us have lost the child within; we have to relearn looking at life as a child does, with a beginner's mind; we must free our mind of all expectations and learn to expect the unexpected. We have to make a U-Turn and learn to be childlike again, otherwise we are going to a wrong direction. We do well to turn and accept and embrace the child within, for as Jesus taught us today, receiving this child within is like receiving Christ himself. And the more childlike (not the more childish) we become, the greater we become heaven bound. Happy the childlike because they behold the face of the Father in heaven, and are beheld by the Father in heaven.