God’s Beloved Children
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Mark 10:14-15 (NRSV).
Jesus’ original audience would have embraced the concept that children should be seen and not heard. So when the disciples try to do what they thought was best by ushering a group of little children out of sight, Jesus scolds them by saying, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”
In other words, Jesus says these children are full-fledged citizens of God’s kingdom now—not when they are gown, but right now. Then He goes on to say something even more radical: “…whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Children are born powerless, vulnerable and very dependent upon others. They are not born knowing how to lie, climb the social ladder or pretend to be anything other than what they are—God’s beloved children.
This is part of what Jesus is teaching in Mark’s Gospel. He wants His disciples, and us today, to place our faith and trust in God and to remember that we cannot earn our way into God’s kingdom. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot do anything to make God love us more. God’s love for us is unconditional.
I do not think we can hear this enough, because everything around us tells us the opposite: that we must earn love—that we have to do something to that is pleasing to others. We have to be successful, popular, powerful—and then and only then might we be accepted and loved. However, what Jesus tells us in this passage is that is not the way God’s kingdom works. In God’s kingdom, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
The author Frederick Buechner describes it like this: “We are children at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us—not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us.”[1]
Today, may we embrace this good news and, with God’s grace, may we remember we are so much more than what we have done or what we have left undone. We are God’s beloved children—invited into His kingdom only by His grace and love.
[1] Buechner, Frederick, The Magnificent Defeat (New York: Harper Collins, 1966), 135.
