Perspectives

Today is a Sabbath day, and as usual it was filled with good friends, good food, and good conversation. Unlike past Sabbaths though, the conversation was with a little girl. She couldn’t have been older than six I’d say. You know the kind, we all do; so full of life and energy, security and joy. As we were eating lunch, she went on and on telling story after story, including every detail no matter how trivial or inconvenient. She remembered it all like it were happening right there in front of her eyes and she was merely commentating on the present. She seemed so aware of everything around her; she had everything so well defined and in its proper place.

Later on, after lunch, she went and got herself a sucker. For a few minutes she just sucked on it, and then suddenly exclaimed to me that she was going to put it in the freezer for later. Well, later turned out to be less time than it had taken her to decide to put it there in the first place.

And that’s when it hit me, like a freight train in slow motion.

She was just as happy and content sucking on that lollypop as she was just playing with the rapper. She found meaning in everything she did. Every event, every action had significance. Nothing was pointless; everything had a purpose. And it makes me wonder what our society, our world, has done to us to cause us to accept such strict definitions for success and failure, for significance and pointlessness. This little girl had discovered a world where nothing was insignificant; your life wasn’t pointless if you had never been a great leader or saved thousands of lives through your sacrifice; it’s ok that you aren’t a millionaire or haven’t seen Paris. Your life means something no matter what you did with it. Every action, every choice you make; it’s all part of your story and an even bigger story going on all around you.

It reminds when Christ said that you had to become like a little child to enter the kingdom. Maybe what He was getting at is that we need to stop defining our lives the way the world tells us to. Success isn’t the number of zeros on your bank statement, and it isn’t the number of doctorates and honorary degrees you have either. Maybe He was saying that your existence is significance enough to be worthy of His love.

I worry for that little girl, who will be the one to tell that things aren’t the way she sees them now; who will be the one to tell her who she has to be in order to have worth? What event will strip her of all those sordid dreams? When will she have to face up to reality? Life has done it to us all.

Christ responded to this girl’s problem, this human problem, when He called the Pharisees liars and murderers and fools. Their intent was to lash and bind God’s chosen people to a false reality of their own design. Jesus would have none of it. Why? Because He came to expose the ultimate reality of God’s love for us, regardless of anything that we had done and will do.

When Jesus told his disciples to be as a little child He was saying that this little one’s reality is closer to what is, than all the Pharisees and philosophers, and is even more real than what we can see in front of us…right now.