Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel Jesus praises God for revealing his truths to the childlike, while keeping them hidden from the wise and learned. Is Jesus saying that we should not better ourselves, get an education or grow our brains? Not quite. What I think Jesus is telling us is to get out of our own way. He is reminding us that faith is not something that we need to overthink. We can approach our faith and approach our father in the same way a child approaches their parent.
To call someone childlike we are saying they are innocent, simple, trusting, direct and candid. Children typically do not analyze and overthink every situation. How often has overthinking stood in the way of your faith journey?
Children will typically tell you how they feel in that moment and will do so with direct candor. And Christ wants this from us. He wants us to approach God the Father in this same way. Tell God how you feel, as a child would. Be direct and candid with God the Father. Keep your faith simple. Trust in the Lord, your God. Approaching faith with this innocence, this childlike nature can be very freeing. We become free to love God our Father with reckless abandon, as a child would.
At least in my house, when my children are being childlike, I am often on receiving end. I am there to share in their greatest expressions of joy but also in their outbursts of anger. I take on the anxious questions and the scared tears. I am there when they are angry and there when they show remorse. I am even there when they can’t make sense of what they are feeling, they just know it needs to be expressed. And this is how we should come to God – we should bring our deep joy, our rage and anger, our anxieties, our fears and all of our emotions. May we not be too wise or learned to hide these from God our Father but rather be vulnerable and direct and childlike and bring all that we are to the Lord. Amen.
—AJ Grimm