Childlike trust

Luke 18:15-17New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

There's a reason that as parents we begin teaching our children about "stranger danger" early on.  It is because most children, unless they have stranger anxiety already, tend to see that strange face as a curiosity to be explored and met, rather than something or someone to be feared.  How many children have beamed up at you from the line at the grocery store, or reached their hand up to you to hold because they didn't immediately notice you weren't their mother?

That kind of trust doesn't last, does it? It gets whittled away bit by bit, beginning, with parents.  I look by at my years as the mother of a toddler and I can't help but be a bit sad about the way my own fear for my daughter's safety impinged on her great curiosity about life.  One of the great moments of ambivalence for me as a young mother was having her wave "bye" to me as almost an afterthought as she bounded into her first day of preschool. 

It was wonderful.  And it was terrible.

Well-meaning, safety conscious parents aren't the only thing that whittles away at the trust.  Stranger danger gets taught in schools and it gets taught as children experience separation from parents and begin to learn about real scary things in the world.

Yet Jesus wants - yearns even - for us to have that exact wide-open trust as we enter into relationship with God.  How do we find that again after years of "stranger danger" has been drilled into our heads and hearts?

With an open and whole heart that defies the world to whittle it away.

Faithful God, renew our hearts and minds with whole-hearted trust in you!  Amen.