Like Littles

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I fumble around in the semi-dark, dawn just beginning to peer around the edges of the drawn curtains. My hand pats clumsily around my nightstand until I find my phone. I tap in my passcode and wince before my eyes adjust to the light. I scroll.

This has become my morning routine. I scan the news of the night before. I take in the numbers. I try to interpret charts and graphs. I flick past bold, 28-point fonts, headlines that would have been unthinkable a month ago and now feel commonplace. And before I’ve even gotten out of bed I’ve started the steady IV drip of anxiety and foreboding.

Steady because throughout the day I will repeat this process. I’ll end a video call and open a new tab on my browser to see what I might have missed. In between the steps of making dinner I’ll check in again. Any mental break and I’ll usually find myself drawn there again.

I’m not sure why. Perhaps some part of me thinks that more information might mean more control, that armed with data I might be more able to mentally and emotionally wrestle the surreal into reality. Maybe its simpler than that. Or more complex. I really don’t know.

Today I resisted the pull of the news (for a little while, at least) and read Mark 10 instead.

There’s this little moment when Jesus throws his arms open to kids. He’s just finished talking about a heavy topic. Before the chapter is over he will predict his own death. But right there in the middle he slows down, welcomes the kids to come in close, and he blesses them.

Whew. That’s convicting. I mean, how much have I been doing that with my kids lately? But I got tripped up even more on what Jesus said.

Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.
Mark 10:15

The kingdom of God is everything. It is in everything, flows through everything, revives everything. What does it mean to receive everything like a child?

I started thinking about how my own kids have received the down-is-up reality of the last few weeks. I compared my constant scrolling and news aggregating to what they’ve been up to.

They’ve played board games, gone sledding, and had snowball fights. They’ve watched movies and played video games. They’ve had light saber battles and pretended to be in school. They’ve wrestled in the yard. They’ve hunted for rocks. They’ve had very loud and very wild dance parties.

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And why do they feel this kind of freedom? How is it that they receive even world-reshaping news and still have moments of carefree joy? At the end of the day, I think they believe that their mom and I have some control over the world. They trust.

And I have to believe that’s what Jesus meant, at least in part. Do we trust like children?

The faith my children place in me is a spell that will someday be broken. At some point, it will be put to the test, and they’ll learn that I can’t be trusted with everything. But I never claimed I could. God, on the other hand, has made exactly that claim.

“Fear not, for I am with your
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Isaiah 41:10

Receiving the kingdom like little children means believing that our Heavenly Father will keep those kinds of promises.

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Do my kids know everything there is to know about what’s going on? No. But even with all of my endless scrolling, I don’t either.

Do they get scared sometimes? Sure. But they’ve come to me and my wife, and they’ve asked questions. We’ve comforted them, and then they’ve gone back to playing.

Are they sad? Sometimes. Definitely. They miss normal. They miss their friends. But they’re coping by becoming one another’s best friends.

Trusting God doesn’t mean that I have all the answers or that I’m never afraid or never sad. Receiving the kingdom like a child means that I still wonder and question. I can still cry. I can still get mad. I can still feel lonely. But it also means that I have a Father who, somehow, holds everything, and with that trust I can also smile, laugh, play, and keep coming back to the grand gift of living. 

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