Childlike Dependency on God

I have moved on to reflecting on the phrase "Give us this day our daily bread" in the Lord's Prayer. Albert Haase in "Living the Lord's Prayer" suggests that praying this is to be childlike and admit our dependency, helplessness and need as is how little children are. It is not necessarily just the innocence aspect of children (which is a common interpretation)but also their total trust in and dependency on their parents for their needs that Jesus challenges us in Matthew 18:3 to change and become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.

There is a French saint called Therese de Lisieux who died of tuberculosis at the age of 24 in the late 1800's. She spoke of spiritual childhood as acknowledging our nothingness and expecting everything good from the Lord. In her simple faith she wrote saying that she was looking for a "very straight, very short, a completely new little way" to heaven. The elevator had just been invented saving people the long walk up the stairs. She wanted to find an elevator to lift her up to Jesus because she was "just too little to climb the ladder of perfection." She found Isaiah 66:12,13 that says "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you ... You shall be nursed and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees." She realized that the elevator to lift her up to heaven was the arms of Jesus. She says "For that I do not need to become big. On the contrary I must stay little."

Oh, that I may never grow up, that I may never outgrow my need for God. May I remain dependent on and fully trusting in my heavenly Father as a child depends on and trusts in their parents. And may I always find myself in Jesus' arms when I think I have lost my way.