I was out walking with my family today. They brought their 4-month-old Golden Retriever with them. Fun day. One of the things making it so enjoyable was watching this puppy chase a butterfly. It was hilarious. He’d go everywhere the butterfly went and would twist and contort trying to reach it. It never did happen.
Don’t you just love unadulterated innocence when you see it? It’s this idea of having an unaffected simplicity or unsophisticated nature about them. I believe that might have been at the heart of Jesus’ statement in Mark 935-37. “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me”
As an adult, I forget and so do you. We forget what faith is and how Jesus talked about it. I need to be reminded that it is first and foremost a complete trust and confidence in God…the kind a child has – uncluttered, unsophisticated, innocent. I was reminded about it today on a walk. Just maybe you were reminded about it yourself.