Jesus called a little one to his side and said to them, “Learn this well: Unless you dramatically change your way of thinking and become teachable, and learn about heaven’s kingdom realm with the wide-eyed wonder of a child, you will never be able to enter in. Whoever continually humbles himself to become like this gentle child is the greatest one in heaven’s kingdom realm.
Matthew 18:2-4 (TPT)
Young hearts often have an ability to live in an expanded universe.
Adults will call it pretend or imagination. But if you ask any boy or girl what they’ve been up to on a given afternoon, they will tell you as if they were delivering the six o’clock news, I went to Mars, had to fight some bad guys and just got back, or I rescued an injured horse and nursed him back to health.
A young heart of four or five, 10 or 11, knows there is more to the world than meets the eye and it affects that tender heart deeply. Children are able to dream and imagine freely in an un-adult-erated way.
Many children feel more deeply and want far more out of life than most adults do. Why do we allow ourselves to leave this youthful place of deep heart and desire and get so lost in logic, reason, pessimism and doubt? A good friend of mine announced to me recently, “I’m a skeptic; that’s just the way I am.” A more honest statement might be, I’ve learned to be skeptical.
I believe the tender hearts of our childhood get lost because of the pain we all suffer as we journey into adulthood. When you look at a life and its history, there is a collection of sad, difficult, hurtful stories each individual heart has endured.
If we are ever going to recover and find Life—or find it again—we must return to that Larger Story we believed in once upon a time. There is a far more glorious and far more dangerous story all around us. We must regain our childlike hearts if we are to see, hear and engage in it once again. (Chapter 5)
An excerpt from Search and Rescue.
