Filled With Wonder
Winslow Homer, Boys in a Pasture, 1874
The other morning I found myself pondering something that Jesus talks about, twice, once in Matthew and once in Mark. What he says both puzzles me and strikes me as outrageously wonderful. The comment that sent me into such reverie is this: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 (NRSV)
Mark expands on these thoughts:
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. Mark 10:14 -16 (NRSV)
I found myself asking, well, what in the world could Jesus mean? We all love children, of course, maybe even more as we grow older, unless they get a little out of control. They can be disruptive, unruly, too loud, obnoxious. If I want to “receive the kingdom of God,” which I most certainly do, how do I go about “receiving” it “as a little child?” What is it I need to “change,” or “turn around,” (from the REB translation), so that I can “receive” this kingdom?
As I was pondering this weighty theological thought, I found myself remembering, in some detail, early one Saturday morning when our twin boys were still very little. I was in graduate school, trying to scratch out every ounce of sleep I could find. Sharon was almost always sleep deprived trying to keep these two little guys reasonably corralled. On that Saturday morning, we woke up to find our little guys were gone, having learned by now to get out of their cribs. Explorers though they always were, and are, we went searching, a little frantically.
We found them on the kitchen floor. One of them shouted out, “look, Mom, we’re building a castle.” They had torn the centers out of each piece of bread from a whole loaf and stacked it all neatly. To the side they placed the hollow crusts on top of each other. The stories we were reading to them, apparently, must be sparking their budding imaginations. A castle, huh?
Maybe they were thinking about a moat too because they had poured out at least a quart of milk and mixed in the colorful swirl of a whole bottle of orange juice. They had emptied out a can of prunes. The refrigerator door was left open, out of which they were dragging several new items. This was a big project, they must have been thinking. There they were, gleefully sitting in the puddle in their soaked jammies as pleased as they could be.
I found myself wondering if Jesus was ever around twin boys. After our episode, and so many others like them, I find myself asking, do we really want to become like children? Oh sure, we all love children, but only as long as they are under control. We want them to grow up, right?
But think about it. Our boys could not have been more swept up in the wonder of it all. Couldn’t this be something like what Jesus was thinking? We’ve got to discover, or rediscover, wonder and enchantment before we can know what the kingdom is all about. Our boys were indulging in the sheer excitement of creating something. And they were building something together. Their castle was beautiful. They were as utterly innocent as they could be, seemingly devoid of any hint that they were doing something beyond the boundaries. Mostly they were just lost in the wonder of it all. And oh, what joy, they wanted to share with us.
Maybe it is this sheer wonder that Jesus has in mind in his comments. Maybe this is what we need to “turn around” toward. In a world we have disenchanted so utterly, I am hoping, maybe even through remembering our little guys, that just maybe I can become like a child, filled with wonder, curious and creative, building something together, and yes, entering then into the kingdom of heaven. As Jesus welcomes me. Like a child. Even as I grow older.