Unless you accept God’s Kingdom in the simplicity of a child,
you’ll never get in.” (Luke 18:17 MSG)
This scripture leads us to think about how children receive things. It’s easy to picture this at Christmas-time when every child is counting down to Christmas morning and brightly wrapped packages under the tree. Veritable joy, wild anticipation and blind trust are the markers of children awaiting Christmas and they could be the identifying features of Kingdom receivers also. Let’s unpack this together:
Veritable Joy.
Children at Christmas are near-to-bursting with joy. Each seasonal activity brings them a bit closer to the actual event. School teachers know, nothing gets taught in the last week before Christmas, the joy is just too much for math and spelling!
What if we walked through this season with the same level of joy? Even better, what if we received the Kingdom the way a child receives Christmas? What if we were full of awe and wonder and bright, bubbling joy?
“You never saw Him, yet you love Him. You still don’t see Him, yet you trust Him with laughter and singing.” (1 Peter 1:8 MSG)
Wild Anticipation.
A child’s anticipation of Christmas is an active one. They participate as they anticipate: singing songs, making crafts, decorating cookies, wrapping gifts. Likewise, we participate as we anticipate the coming Kingdom. We practice repentance, we spend ourselves in prayer and acts of service. We read and work the Word in to our lives and learn what it means to live like Christ.
“But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who know how we’ll end up? What we know is, that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him – an in seeing Him, become like Him. all of us who look forward to His coming stay read, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own.” (1 John 3:2-3 MSG)
Complete Trust.
Children are confident of Christmas. They are not afraid to open presents, but absolutely confident of the intentions of the giver. If children can exhibit that level of trust in their parents or a stranger named Santa, how much more trust can we muster for our good God? Whatever He’s working on as far as eternity has got to be awesome.
Think about it: He put this world together in only six days it’s breathtaking. When Jesus left the earth He said He was going to prepare a place for us and it’s been a little over 2000 years. We know what the Godhead accomplished in a week, let’s imagine what they could organize and breathe into being in a couple of millennia! God’s Word says He gives good gifts. The coming Kingdom will be the second best gift we’ve ever received: the first being salvation, an invitation to join Him in eternity.
“No one’s ever seen or heard anything quite like this. Never so much as imagined anything quite like it – what God has arranged for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9 MSG)
Christmas will come and go, but the Kingdom is coming to reign forever. What if we received it as children receive Christmas? With veritable joy, wild anticipation and complete trust. How would that rewrite the ups and downs of day to day living? How would that stoke the hope of the world to come?
Lord, please grant us child-like faith. We repent of grown up criticism, anxiety and irritability. Help us notice the children this season. Help us learn from their veritable joy, wild anticipation and complete trust. May we receive the Kingdom as children in Jesus’ name. Amen.