you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
It is to little children that the Kingdom of heaven belongs. We are called to repent from our false pretenses of adulthood and embrace the simplicity, trust, and oneness of heart that characterizes children at their best.
Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
Our Father in heaven is impatient with pride, arrogance, and boasting. He does not truck with selfishness or violence. It is not that children never fall into such traps. But children are at their best when they feel the most secure and loved by their parents. We can see when they rest in the delight of their mothers and their fathers a contentment that we ourselves can only imagine. Yet we too are meant to rest in the delight of our Father in heaven.
Resting in the love of the Father makes us the kind of children from which he can't turn away, for whom he will do anything he can. Yet even if we don't rest there, even if we wander away, he will seek us, because he knows our potential. He sees that we can in fact return. We can be born again and become new creations. Our very potential for this means that God will stop at nothing to bring it to fulfillment
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?
When we become rebellious and slip into the vices we inevitably artificially age ourselves. We lose the childlike nature that God delights in. At such times, when he goes out to search for his sheep, he often finds and meets us in his word. There may be a bitter aspect to swallowing it, but it will ultimately be for our good. The more we can take it in and internalize it the sweeter it will be.
I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth.
He said: Son of man, go now to the house of Israel,
and speak my words to them.
Matt Maher - As It Is In Heaven
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