You Must Become Like Children (Matt 18:3)

And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 18:3

No matter how old you may be, everyone has at least vague memories of what life used to be like as a child. We all used to live in a miraculous world where there were adventures awaiting us around every corner; a world where nothing was impossible.

Then something happened.

We grew up.

We were told by adults that the magical world we lived in as kids only exists in fairy tales, and that the real world is filled with burdens, suffering, war, and taxes.

So who was right?

The truth is, they were both right.

The adults are right to say that we can't live like children forever - eventually we do need to grow up. But the kids are right to insist that life is more than just paying bills and carrying heavy burdens.

The problem is that most people think these are their only two options: either do everything you can to resist growing up and so remain an immature child in adult form OR accept as fact that the life we knew as kids was make-believe and our fate is nothing more than to grind through life until we can reach the magical age of retirement.

With these two as our only options, it's no wonder most people become dependant upon drugs or alcohol and grow more bitter with age.

But thankfully for us there is a third option, and this third option is what Jesus came to reveal to us.

Becoming an adult in this world is a necessary stage of life. But it's not supposed to be the final stage. The final stage is something much different - it is where we come to possess both the maturity of adulthood as well as the innocence of childhood.

It is when we are able to see clearly the ugliness and evil of this world, but even in the midst of that darkness, what we see more clearly is the beauty and goodness of God.

Time has a way of forcing the first two stages of life upon us. No one chooses to be a child, and no one chooses to become an adult. And no matter how much one may try to resist this process, the years continue to pass like clockwork.

But powerful as it may be, when it comes to bringing anyone to this third stage of life, time is completely powerless. A million years may pass in the river of time and still we would be no closer to it.

And this is because the third stage is not a natural stage of life at all.

It is supernatural.

It requires death with regard to time and rebirth into the Eternal.

It requires us, with our physical eyes, to be able to watch the clock tick day after day, but with the eyes of our spirit to know that even decades are as but a vapor compared to the Eternal Reality which is our true home.

Jesus has conquered this world of time and space so we don't have to. He has taken away our heavy burden and exchanged it for His light one. He has secured the victory so we can enjoy the game.

He has traversed the bottomless pit of suffering so that no matter how far into it we may fall, He will always be right there with us.

He confirms the intuition we all had as children but what "intelligent" man has caused us to forget: that the world is not just a meaningless jumble of dead swirling atoms. The world is a miraculous place pulsating with the presence of God if only we had eyes to see.

We were not born simply in order to grow up, pay our bills and then die.

We were born for a life of adventure.

And until one has followed Jesus through the Cross and out the other side, that adventure has not even begun.

No eye has seen,

no ear has heard,

no heart has imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love Him

1 Corinthians 2:9