On being like little children

I have asked the Lord a dozen times what He meant regarding this passage…

Matthew 18: 1-4

“ At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

And as a grown up I have forgotten how it felt like being one, being like that of a child. And buried among the worries of work life, social life, heck even love life, it is somehow impossible to feel like one… well impossible to me, but we all know that nothing is impossible to God and so here’s how He brought me back to 1993.

Being drowned by everything and not having control is not what a child feels like. As children all we cared about was watching Voltes V every Saturday afternoon, get sweaty as we play outside with our friends, heck we never even cared if we broke some bones but we still climb trees… no worries, no attachments, carefree children. And at 23, I can’t do that anymore, I have the whole future to think about, to dream about, I’ve got work, tons of work to do, colleagues who depends on me somehow, and a household to pay some bills. Now… tell me how in the world can we go back and free ourselves from these things, and be like children… And so the Lord gave me an opportunity to go out of the country for a week-long vacation, and experience Disneyland, and go bananas shopping in Hong Kong… little did I know the Lord was answering the very prayer I prayed weeks back…

Before I get to my point here’s a little background of my trip. I was with my brother, sister-in-law, and their son- my nephew, together with us were the family of my sister-in-law, together with them are 3 children with an average age of 9 below. So under my wing of responsibilities were three kids, and a toddler… and boy oh boy they we’re a handful. We stayed at Disney’s Hollywood Hotel within the Disneyland island and stayed there for 4 nights and 5 days. Their food was expensive, but awesome and they have these Mickey Mouse waffles… they’re waffles that has the face of Mickey Mouse.

During the trip I’ve seen these children run around, get preoccupied with toys, and fight amongst each other because of one not letting the other one borrow. Of course as an adult I tried being a mediator, and try some reasoning with a 3 year old and a 7 year old… of course it didn’t work. And of course I couldn’t help but feel some anger, frustrations, and annoyed when these circumstances happen, but even if they’ve done you wrong like accidentally poke a lady in the butt with their toy, or spill a drink on you, or throw up on the pillow you’re going to sleep in, or even slapping you silly because they can’t get what they want… but once they look at you and understand what they did, and tell you “Sorry Tito Marc...” oh my goodness my heart just melts and I completely forget everything they did there. And after saying their sorry they’ll go about their things, and you can just see how confident children are under adults love. Sometimes they don’t even know what they do, but even after they write on the wall of your room, mess up some of your collectibles, even without saying sorry they’ll just run towards you and make hug you where they can, every emotion will just flitter away. And so I understood what the passage meant.

We, as children of God should be confident of the forgiveness that’s there even if we have wronged Him. Even if we have lived unholy lives in front of a Holy God, we know that there’s an underlying fact that He loves us very much that He’ll just look at you with a messed up heart as you ask for forgiveness. If there’s something I’ve learned about that trip regarding this passage is that we can be confident under the wing of God’s love. We see a couple of parables regarding this (Lost sheep, and Prodigal Son) but this experience just made it real.

And on top of that, He reminded me how it felt like being a kid as I roam around the grounds of Disneyland seeing characters come alive right in front of you and the fireworks to end the night was just the perfect coup-de-grace of the whole experience…

I hope I made sense and I hope that like me we gain an inch closer in understanding the love God has for us.