Thursday, March 17, 2005
On Being Childlike
The Road Less Travelled By has an interesting post, Of Childlike Prayer. courtesy of this week's Christian Carnival. I love Jen's sentiment:
Think about this. When you were a child and you wanted something, anything, did you try and figure out how to get it for yourself, or was your first instinct to ask your parents for it? What's your first instinct now? If it is not to ask God, then you do not have the correct child-like approach. (GUILTY!)
We are to "pray without ceasing." Does this mean we have to be on our knees 24/7, intensely interceding on behalf of the world? No. It does mean that we should live in an attitude of humility, as if our lives are on a speakerphone conversation with God, in which either one of us can pick up the conversation at any time, fully realizing that in the moments when we are not actively engaged in conversation, the other has complete access to everything that is going on.But I would add a caution about the difference between being "child-like" and being "childish." Approaching God in a child-like fashion does not mean we abandon our hard won vocabulary or that we set aside the powers of reason that we have developed as adults. Rather I think it means we have the same unalterable faith in the goodness of God as a child does in his or her parents. (I know, I know, there are a lot of parents that are "not good" - we're talking ideally) I think approaching God in a child-like fashion means that we have the same utter and total reliance on God that a child has on his or her parents.
Think about this. When you were a child and you wanted something, anything, did you try and figure out how to get it for yourself, or was your first instinct to ask your parents for it? What's your first instinct now? If it is not to ask God, then you do not have the correct child-like approach. (GUILTY!)
