I got home late tonight; it's just after twelve and its bedtime. I blissfully utilize my newly inherited espresso machine and make something decaf before hitting the sack. And as I am unwinding, thoughts are bidding my mind farewell like a southbound train. I'm stewing over what it means to become like a child. These days I am finding the simple things in life valuable and appealing, I guess I am tired of making things complicated and so I endeavor to learn the art of grasping simple truths..

 
In Matthew 18 Jesus says that "unless you become like a child you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." I wonder what that means for me?  I wonder where it applies...
Tonight I think that perhaps it is speaking to the reasoning and the expectations I come to God with and how it affects my ability to perceive what he is doing.  If you look at children they are perceptive, instinctive, discerning, vulnerable, trusting, cautious and most of all willing.  They don't take every single thing as true yet there is such innocence because they have little life experience.  I think about how much I have changed over the past 10 years of my life, some parts of me have become jaded by the pain of life. Other parts of me have grown deeply to know and taste the faithfulness and goodness of God through seasons of growth and blessing I could not have dreamed up.  All of this experience good and bad has brought me to a place where I now have expectations.  Eg. "I know how God has moved in my life before therefore...this is what it looks like." Or, "this did not work out well in the past, I am not going to try this again in a different situation"... etc... we come up with methods of perceiving life according to what we have experienced most often.  And I wonder if God is now doing something new and I wonder if for us to fully participate with Him we need to lay down all of those things that we think we know about how he moves and just be willing to be children and he be God.

I wonder what He will do and what we will see when all we are is open...hand in hand with being wise and discerning...deeply trusting and hoping and most of all boiling over with anticipation like a child.

Blessings,

Jaimee Turner