Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
We are called to become like little children. This is not an endorsement of our present condition of immaturity if that be the case. It is rather a call to a fresh appreciate of our relationship to God. God is our Father and we can depend on him. He is strong and we can rely on him.
As a Father he feeds his family.
Son of man, he then said to me,
feed your belly and fill your stomach
with this scroll I am giving you.
He gives us his word to eat. We need to receive what is set before us. In this sense we must be good children who don't only want dessert. We need to be willing to receive meat as well as milk. We need to be mature in this sense. But we need to be childlike in relying in God and trusting him.
We see that God feeds his family by his word and by his own body and blood. It is precisely in gathering around his table that we are most truly his family. This means we can't simply accumulate the doctrine we like and ignore the teachings that don't agree with our political ideology. Nor can we choose immorality along with the Eucharist. We need to eat what God sets before us and ignore completely the table with which the world tries to tempt us. "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons" (see First Corinthians 10:21).
We sometimes get lost. Life throws us and we can't easily find our way back to the family table. At such times we can count on our Father to seek us out. At such times we are fearful that we won't find our way back to the blessings we once knew. But though we are trying to find our way home the Father is even more so looking for us and trying to bring us back.
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
Even when things seem confusing and we don't know the next step to take we need not despair. It is not hopeless. God will find us. And in finding us he will rejoice.
As God's children we want to become like our Father. We too want to have hearts that want to seek and to save the lost.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost.
God's table sometimes includes medicine which tastes bitter to us. But this bitterness is temporary. It is an aid to growth. It leads more and more to the bread which contains all sweetness within it. May the LORD help us to desire, to appreciate, and to depend on being gathered at his table.
How sweet to my palate are your promises,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
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