Receiving God's kingdom like little children

Elimo Njau, Nativity, 1959. St James' Anglican Cathedral, Kiharu, Murang'a, Kenya

One of my in-laws is pregnant. She was recently explaining how, during an ultrasound scan, she unexpectedly felt protective of her baby: while the nurse was pushing the scanner around her belly searching for the baby's head, my relative instinctively wanted to guard the baby from physical harm. 

Such parental protection will, God willing, continue also after her baby is born. I recently learned that because our species, Homo sapiens, stands upright, thus constricting the female pelvis, and because our brains and thus also our heads are 300% bigger than those of other primates, human babies are born more prematurely than those of any other species. This means human parents have greater responsibility than other animals in protecting, providing for, nurturing and teaching their children, who depend on them.

This sheds new light, for me, on Jesus' teaching that 'anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it' (Lk. 18:17). 

Like little children depending on their parents (ideally both parents) not only to live but also thrive, we depend on God for everything we need and receiving his kingdom.

Psalm 131 provides a helpful image of this, comparing our relationship with God to a weaned child with their mother:

My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.

Whereas our culture encourages us to be self-reliant and independent, this psalm reminds us that everything we have and need come from God. Whereas success in our time is defined by our achievements and awards, success in the kingdom of God is defined by the quality of one's relationship with God. 

Cardinal John Henry Newman says it this way:

We cannot be our own masters. We are God’s property by creation, by redemption, by regeneration. He has a triple claim upon us. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness, or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous...But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man – that it is an unnatural state – [that] may do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end. No, we are creatures; and, as being such, we have two duties, to be resigned and to be thankful. (From his sermon 'Remembrance of Past Mercies')

But isn't simply '[being] resigned and thankful' too easy? Doesn't entering God's kingdom involve struggle? Doesn't Jesus teach that we must enter the kingdom with force (as I wrote about last week)? How do we reconcile joyfully struggling to enter God's kingdom on the one hand with receiving God's kingdom as little children on the other? 

It takes great effort to still and quiet our soul, to rest in the love of God. When our passions and external forces tempt us to seek possessions, status or anything other than God, it takes discipline to put our hope in the LORD instead: in the life that he gives, in the future he is bringing. 

Receiving God's kingdom like children doesn't mean being thoughtless or thinking uncritically. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus challenges his followers, inquirers and opponents to engage critically with his teachings and their own practices, and encourages those who would follow him to first count the cost, like a man planning to build a tower or a king preparing to wage war (Lk. 14:25-33). 

Nor does becoming childlike mean diminishing our self-worth. Receiving God's kingdom results in becoming fully alive, courageous in Christ, as we were created to become (as I have written about here). 

Nor does it mean we shouldn't work hard or tend to our practical needs. As I have written about before, we are called to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, worshipping God and sharing our possessions and our very lives with others -- and this involves our best effort and our love! 

Instead, becoming childlike means that in the midst of our work, our relationships, our downtime, our daily lives, we continually ground ourselves in God's love, putting our hope in his kingdom more than anything else. 

Although to an outsider, it may not look like there is a difference between those who are children of the kingdom and those who are not, I think there is an internal difference: those who are little children in spirit offer themselves to God and others from a place of stability, not anxious striving. Their roots grow strong, deep and firm in the soil of God's love. They are confident about their identity as beloved children of God . 

I introduced this blog post with a painting of Jesus' nativity because that event, which Christians also call the Incarnation, shows us that God himself became like a little child in order to enter -- in fact, establish -- his kingdom. 

The God who created, redeems and regenerates all things became one of us, learning dependence on his parents and others by being born as a baby -- and in a cave of all places, among animals, because the world had no room for him. 

G K Chesterton writes about the significance of Jesus' being born in a cave:

Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sight-seer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight; and that is an idea very difficult to express in most modes of artistic expression.

But in the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth. There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. (The Everlasting Man)

Jesus began the revolutionary upside-down kingdom of God by becoming a little child, thus leading the way for us. Through dependence on his immediate family, he developed dependence on his Heavenly Father, who at significant moments in his life clearly revealed his love for him, such as at Jesus' baptism and his transfiguration. Throughout his life, Jesus took time to abide in God's love, and it was from that centre that he offered his love to the world. At his crucifixion, he surrendered himself completely to God because he knew that God's love was strong enough to save him from death. After his resurrection, he told his disciples that through him, they too -- and we along with them -- can know with certainty that we are God's beloved children.