I left home early this morning to visit a church member at a hospital in Pensacola before her surgery. By the time I got home my family was up and active. I walked into my toddler son’s room where I saw him sitting on the changing table. When he saw me, his eyes lit up, and as I approached, he basically ran off the changing table into my arms. That’s the sort of thing that warms a daddy’s heart.
I spent the next few minutes reflecting on the moment. It occurred to me that, in that moment, my son did not stop to consider whether or not his father would catch him. The thought that he might fall never entered his mind; there was no time. In the joy of the moment, he simply jumped. And he jumped with absolute and utter confidence that he would land in his father’s arms. And he did.
In Mark 10:15, Jesus says that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” In the past, I’ve taken this to refer to the helplessness of children to meet their own needs. They can do nothing for themselves. Likewise, when it comes to salvation, we can do nothing for ourselves, and we must depend exclusively on the finished work of Christ. After catching my boy this morning, this childlikeness took on a whole new dimension. The call to the kingdom is the call to faith in Christ, and faith is nothing but the absolute and utter confidence in Jesus that he will catch us; we will end up in his arms. Pure trust. We should not think this is irrational. Consider my son. He jumped knowing my love for him would do everything possible to protect him. The evidence bears it out. The key is that when he jumped, the object of his confidence was not himself; it was his father. And that is what faith looks like.
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