Like a Child

I remember what it was like when I was small enough to crawl into my mother's lap and feel the love and comfort of her arms around me. In moments like that, all of the cares and worries of life simply vanished away. It didn't matter if someone had been mean to me at school, or if I had broken my favorite toy, or lost my milk money. If a dog had bitten, if a bee had stung, if I was feeling sad, all I had to do was rest myself in the embrace of the one person who loved me no matter what, who would do anything for me because she was my mother.

Jesus said, "Unless you change, and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Jesus said, "If you want to be great in the kingdom, you must become as little children."

Jesus said, "Let the little children come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

How many days do we waste in pursuit of pipe dreams and unattainable goals? How many minutes and hours are spent mulling over matters beyond our control, over politics and religion and the weather and what people are doing across town or around the world? I can't do anything about any of those things. And I certainly don't understand them. But day after day, I have found my thoughts occupied with how to fix the Middle East, how to fix the economy, how to fix the nation, how to fix Obama. I have spent hours talking about what is wrong with the church at large and what I would do to change it. I've written letters and made phone calls and stood up to be counted.

I have argued and debated, cajoled and persuaded. I have proven my point time after time, been right more than I've been wrong. I have done my best to shape the world around me, to bend it to my will. And I have failed. This world does not conform to my wishes, neither do the people in it. If folks would just listen to me and do what I tell them to do...

King David wrote in Psalm 131:

Lord, my heart is not haughty,

nor my eyes lofty.

Neither do I concern myself with great matters,

nor with things too profound for me.

Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with his mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore.

The best way to deal with a world that is spinning completely out of my control, is simply to crawl up into the arms of the Lord and rest there, trusting Him to be in charge and to do what is right. It is in His presence that I find joy, at His right hand where there is pleasure evermore. We need to learn to sit in His lap, and be still.