Week 38 Mark 10
Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.
There are a couple of ways to figure out what the Lord meant by receiving the kingdom like a little child.
On the one hand I can ask: what are the qualities of a child that put me in a position to receive & get into the kingdom? And they might be things like a childlike innocence. Trustfulness. Simplicity. Things like that.
On the other hand I can come at it in reverse. I can think about what n0t-being-childlike is like by looking at my adultlike qualities. Things like being guarded. Suspicious. Defensive. Evasive. Distrustful. Unhelpful. Self-interested. Things like that.
The problem is that when I grow out of Childhood World and move into Adult World these qualities are necessary because Adult World is such a dog-eat-dog place. Being dishonest? Unfair? Competitive? Ruthless? Critical? Judgmental? Callous? They all just seem like survival mechanisms in Adult World.
Still…the Lord says that qualities of Childhood World practices clear my path to the kingdom.
Anyway for now it might be worth:
A) looking a bit more critically at my current menu of Adult World Qualities
B) assessing how advantageous/disadvantageous those qualities are when it comes to moving into the kingdom
C) doing a cost-benefit exercise to assess what it’ll cost me to re-jig my Adult World commitments (and decide whether it’s worth the price).
Note: quote from Mark 10:15 (NIV)