Adelaide bounced into my study and announced in her high-spirited 5 year old voice, “Grandma, is that your sparkly hat on the bed—the blue one with all the little shiny things on it? Because if it is, I want you to wear it to all my birthday parties.”
Of course I promised I would, but I wonder if she will find the same pleasure in Grandma’s hat when Grandma wears it to her 16th birthday party?
Now if my 18 year old son had bounced into my study and said the same thing I would have called the doctor. What is it about little kids that melts our hearts? My grandkids can ask my husband for watermelon and he’ll go to the store to buy them watermelon without a second thought.
Maybe that’s the key—not thinking. When I chat with a small child, my thinking goes into fun mode and the heaviness of life slips away. Thinking is cushioned by joy. Possibilities open up and I’m pulled into realms of thinking that are closed to adult minds. Life takes on new sparkle.
Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless you become like a little child, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven.” The ability to see and enter the Kingdom requires childlike thinking at times—wearing sparkly hats to birthday parties and going to the store for watermelon instead of the more adult things you should be doing.
The Backward Kingdom awaits—what hat will you be wearing to the birthday party?
In Him together, Susan Gaddis
Making a mistake doesn’t have to define us. Yet, as a counselor, I talk to many people who interpret themselves by their mistakes. Others are quick to hold a spouse, child or co-worker hostage to long ago failures.
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