“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)
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)
How does one make the journey from knowing we need God to accepting his grace and receiving the kingdom of God?
That is not a journey that can be prescribed. Brian D. McLaren wrote a book called: We Make the Road by Walking (http://brianmclaren.net/we-make-the-road-by-walking-2/) and that largely sums up the life of faith. Knowing the destination, we look back on how we’ve travelled thus far, recalibrate and move forward. And, we learn along the journey what is helpful and what is not. We learn how much we need the grace and mercy of a loving heavenly Father. As we mature, we learn to look with the trust, wonder, and persistent curiosity of a child.
Or, we don’t.
In many ways the season of Lent is designed to help us navigate that journey. Through prayer and fasting we are challenged to divest ourselves of unnecessary baggage: our sense of importance, our sense of ability, our sense of self-reliance, so that, by the time we stand before the cross on Good Friday we can sing: