Daily Scripture:
Matthew 18:1 At that moment the talmidim came to Yeshua and asked, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” 2 He called a child to him, stood him among them, 3 and said, “Yes! I tell you that unless you change and become like little children, you won’t even enter the Kingdom of Heaven! 4 So the greatest in the Kingdom is whoever makes himself as humble as this child. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me; (Complete Jewish Bible).
Matthew 19:13 Then children were brought to him so that he might lay his hands on them and pray for them, but the talmidim rebuked the people bringing them. 14 However, Yeshua said, “Let the children come to me, don’t stop them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” 15 Then, after laying his hands on them, he went on his way. (Complete Jewish Bible).
Reflection Questions:
When the disciples asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus called a little child to sit among them as his answer. Our world and culture tends to value children more highly than the culture Jesus lived in, but we’d still be unlikely, left to our natural impulses, to answer a “greatest” question as Jesus did. “In ancient society, children were powerless and often overlooked. Ancient speakers and writers typically offered powerful leaders as heroes and models for imitation.”*
- They offered “powerful leaders as heroes and models for imitation”? After reviewing that evidence, Pastor John Ortberg wrote drily, “Imagine living in a world obsessed with status. (It may not require all that much effort.)”** What social and spiritual downsides can there be of mainly holding up powerful people as models? What do you learn from Jesus' strikingly counter-cultural way of identifying “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”?
- We’d never scold people for bringing children to Jesus. But valuing children takes more than cute photos and emotions. “Children are more treasured these days, but caring for children often isn’t valued. Child-care workers are frequently poorly paid and the work is often considered a low-status profession. Parents who leave the workforce to care for children obviously lose income but sometimes even more: a sense of identity, a relationship network, and even a feeling of worth. What if we valued caring for children the way Jesus did?”***
* HarperCollins Christian Publishing. NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, eBook: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture (Kindle Locations 220266-220267). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
** John Ortberg, Who Is This Man? The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012, pp. 75.
*** Karen Chakoian, study note on “Childcare” in The CEB Women’s Bible. Nashville: Common English Bible, 2016, p. 1241.
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at Vibe, West and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
In today’s passages, from Matthew 18 and 19, we see Jesus praise children, saying the kingdom of Heaven belongs to them. Most of the time when I hear these passages mentioned, I hear about how children have this simple faith and curiosity about the world. And those are important. But I think there’s more to it than that.
Children have this undying sense of hope and wonder. They’re amazed by the present and fixated on the future. The past, they largely ignore, because they’ve already got all that figured out. But they’re always looking in awe at the world around them, imagining the people they will be when they’re older and the possibilities that await.
Somewhere along the line, we start thinking differently about the world. We hope for the future, but only the one we’ve planned for—we’ve got that all figured out. We seek out entertainment to get us through the present, which we’re largely bored with. And it’s the past we usually think of most fondly, remembering the good times we’ve had and our glory years behind us. We don’t hope for infinite possibilities, but instead very finite possibilities that we’ve carefully selected and spent years preparing for. We don’t gaze in wonder at the present, but view it merely as a vehicle for getting us to the future we desire. We’ve lost that sense of hope and wonder, and I think it really hurts us.
Do you ever think about what you would do if you woke up tomorrow and you were 18 again, back in the past? I think about that an inordinate amount. I have a detailed plan: what I would invest in, what I would study and work on, who I would talk to, what kind of person I would be. Thinking about the past gives me this weird false hope that things could work out differently. I could be rich. I could be more popular. I could be an amazing person.
I saw a musing on Twitter recently. We see these sci-fi plots of people who travel back in time being so careful because changing even the smallest thing could have big ramifications in the present. But how often do we think that changing small things in the present can have huge ramifications on the future? In the daydream I mentioned above, none of those things are unattainable right now. I can invest wisely. I can study and work on things for my future. I can work on being a better person. Sure, I don’t know the future, but I can reclaim that childlike sense of hope and wonder and explore and let what I find shape my expectations of the future rather than letting my expectations of the future define the things I do today.
And my Christian life could benefit the most from reigniting those passions of my childhood. Too often, I set out to follow God when I know I already have the whole course charted myself. Too often, my spiritual life most closely resembles picking out a present for myself and then acting surprised when I open it. But that puts hard limits on how far I will follow God. If we reclaim that childlike hope and wonder, not focusing in on one possibility of our choosing but being open to an endless array of them, we may soon find doors opening we didn’t even know existed.
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- Prayer Tip: Jesus Loves the Little Children
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- Prophetic perspective for a puzzled prisoner
- Or download this week's printable GPS.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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