"Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 18:3-4

A couple of weeks ago I volunteered to help with VBS at Church. I told them to put me wherever they needed me, and I wound up in charge of 13 kindergartners. You know, people say all the time that you should spend time around people who are different than you are to expand your mind. I think normally this refers to people of different cultures, but I have now seen it can also apply to people of different age groups. Until this week I had no idea how many different ways one could use the word "poo-poo." My patience and problem-solving skills have improved drastically, and I got to exercise my spontaneity with attention-grabbing games and activities.

But seriously, all jokes aside, it has been a lot of fun teaching these kids about the Christ who sees, knows, and saves us. In the process, I got reminded of how little kids think and operate. To be honest, it had been a while since I had been around many tiny humans like that. They are, in fact, human- no doubt. They are not, as some parents or grandparents or aunties and uncles deem them, "perfect little angels." No, it's evident they do have the Adamic nature. They kick and slap and tell fibs and steal things and run their mouths and push each other out of line. Not that you can hardly blame them; they just follow the nature they inherited.

Mind you, I'm not trying to label children as behemoths. They are, in nearly every sense that we use the phrase, "good kids." More often than they cause trouble, they do what they are supposed to: listen, keep their hands to themselves, treat each other nicely, tell the truth and so on. But their apparent occasional naughtiness is a reminder to me that even from the early stages of life we are in need of a savior. I mean, even as independent as we think we are at that age we know there are things we can't do by ourselves. Whether we realize it or not, we need someone who can cover our naughtiness with His righteousness before an accuser.

It's kind of like as a kid when you were watching a scary movie, and your parent covered you up with your favorite blanket and wrapped you in his or her arms. Or when they tucked you in so that the monsters under your bed couldn't get to you. Or when you visited a neighbor's house and you hid behind their legs for protection from their German Shepherd. Whether the threat was real or not, we were not ashamed to run to our parents for protection. Or better yet, to cry out to them and have them run to us. Why then do we now all too often hesitate to run or cry out to our heavenly father when faced with threats?

We all have threats in this life. Financial threats, relationship threats, emotional threats, medical threats, you name it. Sometimes that's all they are- threats. Like, as a kid you might have been scared to walk through a dark hallway. Sometimes it was a legitimate issue- you might have fallen down and skinned your knee. If it was simply a threat, our parents would walk us through it. If it was a legitimate issue they would help us solve it. But in either circumstance, what kept you from crying out for a hand to hold or a band-aid?

Nothing, right? If we thought that having our parent there would be beneficial in any way, we wanted them there. And as often as they were capable, they were there. So why then, when we have access to a heavenly Father who will always be there, do we hesitate to cry out to him when faced with trouble? I think the answer is found implicitly in the scripture above: Pride. See, Jesus says we need to humble ourselves like little children. We are adults, the opposite of children, so that leads me to look at the opposite of humility, which is pride. It makes perfect sense, though, because often when faced with trials we do take to our pride and try to handle it on our own. But humility cries out like a little child and admits that we cannot handle whatever we are facing on our own. We need help.

It is this realization of necessity that can lead to salvation. We can't pray for a need that we don't realize exists. Whether it is salvation from our own sin or salvation from some threat after that, our Heavenly Father will always come running when we cry out to Him. I pray that we humble ourselves like children as the Scripture says so that we are not ashamed to do so.