I want to share a part of the 'Ragamuffin Gospel' by Brennan Manning, which is where my heart is trying to break out of appearances, learning to live for the beauty in the moment and loving the hearts of children.
Jesus came to the heart of the matter as He set the child on His knee. the child is unself-conscious, incapable of pretense. I am reminded of the night little John Dyer, three years old, knocked on our door flanked by his parents. I looked down and said 'Hi, John, I am delighted to see you.' He looked neither to the right nor left. His face was set like a flint. He narrowed his eyes with the apocalyptic glint of an aimed gun. "Where's the cookies?' he demanded.
The kingdom belongs to people who aren't trying to look good and impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior. Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weaknesses and character defects. The child doesn't have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn't have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn't have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn't have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies: the gift of the kingdom.
When Jesus tells us to become like little children, He is inviting us to forget what lies behind. Little John Dyer has no past. Whatever we have done in the past, be it good, or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today. It is only now that we are in the presence of God.
The meaning of living in fidelity to the present moment neither retreating to the past nor anticipating the future, is wonderfully illustrated by a Zen story about a monk being pursued by a ferocious tiger. The monk raced to the edge of a cliff, glanced back, and saw the growling tiger about to spring. The monk spotted a rope shinnying down the side of the cliff out of the clutches of the tiger. Whew! narrow escape. The monk then looked down and saw a quarry of jagged rocks five hundred feet below. He looked up and saw the tiger poised atop the cliff with bared claws. Just then, two mice began to nibble at the rope. What to do?
The monk saw a strawberry within arm's reach, growing out of the face of the cliff. He plucked it, ate it, and exclaimed, 'Yum! That's the best strawberry I've ever tasted in my entire life." If he had been preoccupied with the rock below (the future) or the tiger above (the past), he would have missed the strawberry God was giving him in the present moment. Children do not focus on the tigers of the past or the future but only the strawberry that comes in the here and now.
It is no wonder that children grab at my heart over and over again. Over the years teaching these precious little ones, they actually have been teaching me. So many adults see children as a nuisance, uncontrollable and unteachable, but when I look at the heart of a child, wow, it blows me away. Their raw faith, totally open and trusting hearts, waiting to be nurtured and loved often times are faced with sneers, abandonment and rejection. We must be like these little children to enter the Kingdom of God (it is at hand), we must go back and relearn, the children teach us. Their hearts are pure, God gave them to us to teach us His Unconditional Love.
Dear God, will we ever get it? Please forgive us for being so ego driven and selfish. Show us how to see the hearts of every human who is created in Your image, show us how to see with the pure love of a child.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/59/177003916_3d2cea8df1_m.jpg
When Jesus tells us to become like little children, He is inviting us to forget what lies behind. Little John Dyer has no past. Whatever we have done in the past, be it good, or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today. It is only now that we are in the presence of God.
The meaning of living in fidelity to the present moment neither retreating to the past nor anticipating the future, is wonderfully illustrated by a Zen story about a monk being pursued by a ferocious tiger. The monk raced to the edge of a cliff, glanced back, and saw the growling tiger about to spring. The monk spotted a rope shinnying down the side of the cliff out of the clutches of the tiger. Whew! narrow escape. The monk then looked down and saw a quarry of jagged rocks five hundred feet below. He looked up and saw the tiger poised atop the cliff with bared claws. Just then, two mice began to nibble at the rope. What to do?
The monk saw a strawberry within arm's reach, growing out of the face of the cliff. He plucked it, ate it, and exclaimed, 'Yum! That's the best strawberry I've ever tasted in my entire life." If he had been preoccupied with the rock below (the future) or the tiger above (the past), he would have missed the strawberry God was giving him in the present moment. Children do not focus on the tigers of the past or the future but only the strawberry that comes in the here and now.
It is no wonder that children grab at my heart over and over again. Over the years teaching these precious little ones, they actually have been teaching me. So many adults see children as a nuisance, uncontrollable and unteachable, but when I look at the heart of a child, wow, it blows me away. Their raw faith, totally open and trusting hearts, waiting to be nurtured and loved often times are faced with sneers, abandonment and rejection. We must be like these little children to enter the Kingdom of God (it is at hand), we must go back and relearn, the children teach us. Their hearts are pure, God gave them to us to teach us His Unconditional Love.
Dear God, will we ever get it? Please forgive us for being so ego driven and selfish. Show us how to see the hearts of every human who is created in Your image, show us how to see with the pure love of a child.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/59/177003916_3d2cea8df1_m.jpg
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