Let the children come to me
Children are well known for their unpredictability. There are times when you hope that they will be on their best behaviour and they won’t, there are times when you hope they will be quiet, and they just won’t, and at other times they can be little angels behaving perfectly.
But one thing that you can really be sure of with children is that they will say what they think. Some of the children’s letters to God are wonderful, for example :-
Dear GOD,
In school they told us what You do. Who does it when You are on holiday ?
Dear GOD,
Are you really invisible or is that just a trick?
Dear GOD,
Is it true my father won't get to Heaven if he uses his rugby words in the house?
Dear GOD,
Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?
In our gospel reading this morning (Mark
However the disciples thought that Jesus had plenty to do without bothering with children and so they, we are told, spoke sternly to the people. But Jesus immediately rebuked them with some of his most famous and most compassionate words, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs…’
Jesus always made time for people who approached him with good intentions. He even made time for some who did not, but children particularly seem to have a special place in his attention. Apart from his obvious care and compassion for them, another reason for this is that children provide an example of everything that Jesus wants a Christian to be, and this morning I want to think of just 3 of those characteristics.
The first is their lack of status. Children in the time of Jesus were not considered useful members of society at all. Their place would very much have been to keep quiet and just concentrate on growing into someone who may eventually be useful. For girls of course the job was even harder, because even later in life their use would very much have been restricted to childbirth.
Even today children have little real status – we’re much better than in the past certainly, but most children still have no ability or opportunity to make big decisions, and generally their responsibilities are very limited.
And actually this isn’t too much different from where we stand within the
And within the Church to day that is the picture that we must try to create. People being treated equally as part of one united family – babies, young children, teenagers, middle aged and elderly people all bring something to the family of the Church, and all are important members of that family.
And that applies to the roles we have within the Church – those who make tea are fulfilling a ministry just as a Bishop is fulfilling a ministry – all are important. So within the Church, as Christians, we must remember that we are part of a family united under God who loves us equally.
Secondly children have a great willingness to trust people. Of course in strictly practical terms that can be a danger, and adults must take care to find out who their children are trusting, but God wants us to have a childlike trust in him.
Our Bible study group have started to look at the miracles of Jesus and we ended the session this week with the reading from Mark’s gospel of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples who were afraid when the storm broke were rebuked by Jesus who asked them why they didn’t have more faith in him to protect them.
If we look at the history of the Church we will find that the Christians who have done most to build that Church are the ones who trust the most. People who have an unshakeable faith in God, people who know that whatever situation they find themselves in God will protect them and care for them.
Trusting God is not always easy when we allow our natural fears to get in the way – but laying those fears at the feet of God is an important lesson for every Christian to learn.
And thirdly children are remarkably open to new possibilities. The life of a child is very much a journey of discovery – they learn to talk, to play, to read and so on… All the time they are learning new things, and beginning to express themselves. Some of those habits will be bad habits – we learn to fear when we should trust, we learn about status and position and ambition when we should take the message of God as servants.
I read one story recently about a man who was involved in a very big car accident and in the accident his arm was ripped off. When he was eventually released from the car he looked at the wreck and started to shout, ‘My BMW, My BMW’. A witness at the scene said ‘never mind about your car, we need to find your arm to see if it can be sewn back on’.
At that moment the man realised he had lost his arm and started to shout, ‘My rolex, My Rolex !’
As we grow in this country one of the things we inevitably learn, often not realising it, is a kind of materialism, losing sight of what is really important, losing sight of Jesus as the most important thing or person in our lives.
And so we learn bad habits, and another of those is a tendency to fight against change, but we must remember that our lives are journey, a journey hopefully leading us closer to God. It is a journey that will hopefully contain many great moments, but we also learn from the difficult times.
But on any journey we must also be open to new possibilities, and new adventures. I had a discussion with someone recently who liked the old green prayer books and the language contained in it – he commented about how sad it was that we felt is necessary to change the language of the Bible – of course it is not the language of the Bible at all !
Beautiful language or not, and we may have different opinions on that, it is not a language that is relevant to people today, and one thing the Church must always be is relevant, because the message of Jesus is relevant for all people in all ages.
And so we give thanks to God who loves us unquestionably and equally, and we commit ourselves to serving him as one family, willing to trust and ready to do new things for him…
I’ll finish just with two more of the children’s letters to God :-
Dear GOD,
I bet it is very hard for You to love all of the people in the whole world. There are only 4 people in our family and I can never do it.
And :
Dear GOD:
The bad people laughed at Noah – They said, "You made an ark on dry land you fool." But he was smart, he stuck with You. That's what I would do.
May that be what we all do… AMEN
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