Let The Children Come To Me

One of my favorite internet memes, going quiet and then recurring over the years with a regularity Halley’s Comet might envy, goes something like this:

“I don’t care how big, bad, and tough you are, if a toddler lurches up to you with a toy phone and says ‘ring, ring,’ you’re going to answer the phone.”

This connects directly with what Jesus said in Mark 10:13-16:

“And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them.

“When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

“Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”

“Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.”

I heard an excellent homily on this passage recently, concentrating on the difference between being childlike and childish. As a good homily should, it left me thinking for more than a few hours afterwards.

Children are not entirely uncritical about what adults they gravitate toward.  Many children are gifted with a discernment about adults that protects them from exposing themselves too much to unworthy adults while drawing them toward others whose benevolence they sense. Sadly, this discernment is neither universal nor unerring. It is good enough, however, for wise adults to take note of it and raise their attention levels.

It is easy to imagine that in the case of Jesus, the discernment of children would be strong and positive. To understand what Jesus means by telling us to model our acceptance of the kingdom of God on theirs, we must think about how children approach someone they love and trust.

Enthusiasm and Velocity

The first thing that comes to mind is enthusiasm. Think of a child awaiting the arrival of a favorite relative – an aunt or uncle or grandparent, for instance. The child will ask how much longer before their favorite arrives with increasing frequency.  The child hovers around the door or a front window, listening and watching for a car to pull up and park. When the car does arrive, the child runs to the door and calls out that the visitor has arrived, dancing around in anticipation.   And, if old enough, the child rushes out to greet their favored one.

Arising from this enthusiasm is velocity. The child will run to their favorite at top speed, barreling into him or her with little or no restraint.   And finally the child reaches out to hug and to be caught up in an embrace as well.

Adults may approach at a walk, holding on to some dignity and restraint.  But the child abandons these things as being an impediment to their union with the one they love.

Confident and Eager

Then there is confidence. There is no doubt in the child about being welcomed by the favored person.  A child’s enthusiasm and velocity is unburdened by any uncertainty about being welcomed and embraced.

Children are as sure about how they will be greeted as they are about their own feelings. They see no need for a protective pose of moderation or indifference. They are unrestrained by the caution that comes from a lack of trust because their trust is buoyed by their discernment and previous experience.

Eagerness to share is another feature of how children approach a loved and trusted person. They cannot wait to tell of recent events, or trials and triumphs. They will bring out new or favorite toys or other possessions and hold them up for admiration and offer to demonstrate how this toy works or that garment looks.  And they watch eagerly for any sign of approval and delight in attention and affection.

When a child meets a new person their discernment commends to them, they are equally eager to share themselves, their names, their talents and skills, everything they are proud of and think important about who they are. A child assumes their favored person will receive their presentation of themselves with the same enthusiasm they have in the offering.

Cautious Adults

As adults, however, we distrust such impulses as being egotistical or shy away from them as being unsafe. For a child though, it is a part of being fully known by someone they want to be known by.

Bringing these childlike actions and attitudes into adult lives is not easy.  As adults we have lost the unselfconscious directness of the child’s way of knowing and being known.

Adults have been hurt – and have hurt others – too often and in too many ways not to have adopted myriad self-protective habits of caution, restraint, wariness, suspicion, reticence, and more. We look before we leap.  Or we test the water, and act not in haste lest we regret at leisure.  The list of cautionary clichés and sayings we employ is exhausting if not actually endless.

Even so, we are neither completely removed from nor unreachable by the childlike, especially from a real child. This is why, when a toddler says “ring, ring” almost all of us will pick up that toy handset and say “Hello.”  This is another feature of the way a child approaches life: a child has the power to elicit from many of us a response from our best selves.

Innocence

It is, sadly, sometimes terribly true that the innocence of children is abused, and even the smallest amount of such abuse is far too much. As such, very few people reach adulthood with their childhood innocence intact.  And this is another likely one reason so many of us will answer the toy phone.

We may know only too well that such innocence is not likely to survive. But almost all of us are averse to feeling that we may be the first to contribute to that loss. So when we hear the toy phone ring, we want to join in, not just to spare the innocence of the child, but to recapture for a moment our own.

Create New Habits

We do not require a child to work at recapturing this. We can do so by attempting to create some habits in how we approach the world around of us.

When the homilist rises to illuminate the day’s readings, don’t think “Ah, here we go – another explication of the beatitudes” or “OK, time for more words on who my neighbor really is.”   Instead, think “here is another opportunity to see the familiar through different eyes.”  Or even think “suppose I was hearing this scripture for the first time—what might I wonder about it or want to understand that wasn’t obvious?”

We can sometimes put aside our protective distance and allow the full immediacy of a situation to envelope us. We can permit ourselves to be pleased and excited about the possibility of being known by God enough to be eager to bring to Him our treasures, our trails and triumphs, trusting Him to be as delighted as us, as a child trusts a favored adult to be delighted with him.

Risk Taking

None of this is easy. Our personal passages into adulthood are littered with object lessons promoting well-defined boundaries and appropriate personal distances. Learning how and when and where to close the distance and lower the boundary walls is full of risk and peril, both real and perceived.

A good idea is to begin with Jesus himself.  Lowering our boundary walls in prayer and closing the distance between ourselves and the Risen Lord in our meditations and reading of scripture are things that are not that difficult to do.  Properly done, this will strengthen us and bring us into greater security than we can at first imagine.

If we cannot feel in the moment the excitement of a child waiting for a beloved relative to arrive, we can at least remind ourselves that we once did feel such eagerness, and that with God’s help we can learn it anew as a part of our life in prayer and worship.

We did not lose our childlike selves in mere hours or days.  And we are not likely to recover the same in any less time than it took to leave them behind. But if we approach the task with humility and faith, then what a wonder we stand to gain: to approach the Lord with unfettered joy and unrestrained delight – for there is the kingdom of Heaven indeed.

A Prayer

Father in heaven, we pray you restore to us the ability to approach you with the hearts and confidence of children, secure in the knowledge that we are your children, and that you welcome us as a loving father welcomes his own. Instill in us the joy and delight of innocence and the security of knowing we are indeed welcomed and cherished. Encircle us with your arms and grant us awareness of your presence and love, that we may properly enter the kingdom of Heaven where you live and reign forever and ever.
Amen!