A Ramble about Little Children

I was out playing ball with my son today. I know I don't do this enough. I've never been much of a football (or any other kind of sports) father. But, I gave my word to him that we would go out just the two of us for a little while this morning. It was good. We kicked the ball around the soccer field for a little while, and then we tried to shoot baskets (emphasis on "tried," neither of us made it), and then we wandered around the school playground by ourselves talking and finding things to do. He was excited to show me how he could make it all the way across the monkey bars, and was proud of himself when he did it on both sets of monkey bars.

As a grown up, I've been preoccupied lately with all sorts of grown up things. I've been preoccupied with where my family and I have been, and where we're going. I've been preoccupied with my own fears, my own hopes, and I haven't really been present much, even if I'm in the room, and when someone tries, knowingly or unknowingly to pull me back into the present reality, I get frustrated and even angry.

My six year old son, however, has no such hang ups. Whatever he does at this stage in his life, he's always in the moment. He gets frustrated when I try to pull him out of it into something that's hypothetical, and could happen (those man to man talks which Dads try to give). He wants to show me what he can do. He wants to explore. He wants to enjoy each and every moment he has with me.

All of my kids were like this at one point in time, although the older my girls get the more preoccupied they get with other things. But when they were much younger, they could care less about what had happened or what would happen. Only about what was happening.

Jesus said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand [i.e., right here, right now]" (brackets mine). He also said that "unless you repent and become as little children, you can by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." There are as many commentaries as grains of sand on the beach on what these mean.

Here's what I think, the Kingdom of Heaven is also the Eternal Life talked about in John, and it's the intimate experience of union with God in our lives in the here and now. That experience of God, irregardless of who you are, will not happen until we let go of everything which ties us down. Most especially, it won't happen until we let go of what has happened in the past, and let go of what will or might happen in the future.

Small kids have no problem with this. They, for some reason, can see that the past is gone, and the future hasn't happened yet. If it's not right now, then it doesn't exist. It's only grown ups who have this "distorted" view of reality that the past and the future are more important that what's right in front of us right now. Animals seem to have the same ability to be in the present at all times. Small kids tend to assume that their parents will take care of them and that they will take care of the future, and somehow fix whatever trouble they got into in the past. As a result, they believe they have no concerns and can focus on what matters most to them, right here, right now. It's only grown ups that really want to somehow disabuse them of that notion and get them ready for "adulthood". In so doing, we try and destroy that simple faith which they possess, and it becomes ridiculously difficult to recover once it's destroyed.

Instead of trying to encourage little kids to "grow up", Jesus told grown ups to become like little kids. Instead of telling them to make sure they were well taken care of for the future and get their retirement plans in order, he told them to not to store up money and wealth. He told them to ask God for the things they needed from day to day. In other words, He told them to live from God's paycheck to paycheck, here in the moment. He told them to do all those things which children do by nature, and at which economists the world over are horrified.

Truth is, when we're afraid of what might happen, we're jumping at shadows and things which seem very real, but in fact don't even exist at the moment. If we're living in the past, we live in either a nightmare world or a fantasy world which no longer exists and is shaped by either our regrets and fears, or our rosy memories. All fear is concentrated in either what has happened or what might happen, not what is happening right here, and right now.

This is where we meet and experience God, right here and right now. This is where we enter the Kingdom of Heaven, right here and right now. This is where we inherit the Eternal Life, right here and right now. Sometimes we can learn a lot more from little kids than they could ever learn from us.