Childlikeness lives with a simple trust that if God provides for lilies and sparrows, that he will provide for me if I work hard. It avoids the grief and complexity of pursuing riches for their own sake, or pursuing vainglory, and all the tiresome pomp and frippery that is needed to prop up and polish our image. It finds contentment in a simplicity of lifestyle, and does not become entangled with this world. 

Reverent love includes a deep sense of being a small, teachable, weak being who is yet alive and admiring God’s goodness. To be under the shadow and care of such a Father is to experience a profound kind of smallness, innocence and safety in his marvelous world. This experience is the aspect of reverence we call childlikeness.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:1-4)

Not only are Christians to receive everyone, from adults down to children, but we are to be like children. There is something to conversion itself which requires childlikeness.

What does Jesus mean by “becoming like a little child”? Because before we rush to say that children are pictures of purity and innocence, a myth started by the French sceptic Rousseau, common sense and experience tell us that this is not the case. Children can be very cruel and spiteful to one another. Children do not naturally serve others. Children push to the front of the line, and say “Me first” in screeching voices. Children can be proud, boastful, and supremely selfish.  What then does Jesus mean we are to imitate? Surely not the childishness of children, for childishness is something we want to outgrow. Indeed, Paul says spiritual childishness must be avoided: “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting…“(Ephesians 4:14)

There is a fundamental difference however, between being childish and childlike. Childishness is something not fully formed, that requires growth and correction.  But to speak of something as childlike refers to something that ought not to be lost.

Clyde Kilby’s resolutions illustrate some of the attitudes of the childlike. The first is wonder.

• At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

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