Hungry for God: A Childlike Perspective

This week, while reading the "Rejoice" daily devotional, we came across a story about being hungry for God. We asked Cypress what that meant and she responded that we needed to feed Jesus growing foods.

Dan and I got to talking about that. Children really don't understand the concept of being hungry for God. Their extent of understand is that they just love him. (and yes, those are Cypress's words). This got us to talking about the child-like faith we are supposed to have. If you really examine the faith of a child, their beliefs are quite simple. They believe that God loves them and they love him. There is nothing more complicated than that. But often, we as adults get caught up in the mentality of "doing" rather than "being". Are we praying enough? Reading the Bible enough? Serving enough? And there is often guilt associated with those thoughts. Children don't have those types of thoughts. They are masters in the art of just living in the moment, just "being". They don't really worry about what is for supper or if they are "Christian" enough. And if they do, often these are feeling put on by adults.

I can remember in grade 2 having the Gideons come in to talk with our class. I felt like I was a good Christian, until they talked about how we should read our Bibles every day. After that day, I started feeling guilty about missing a day's reading or not praying every night. All of a sudden, I wasn't the Christian that I was supposed to be. Or so I thought. I was wracked with guilt about not "doing" enough to prove my faith.

Please don't misinterpret what we are saying. We know its good to read your Bible and to pray. But these shouldn't be the markers of a good Christian. In Jesus' time, the Pharisees were the ones "doing" all they could to make themselves holy, yet Jesus condemned their behaviour. Martha was the doer, but she was chastised for not being like Mary who sat at Jesus' feet, being in his presence.

Perhaps the children have it right. We really just need to "be." It's not that we need to stop doing all those wonderful things, but perhaps we need to readjust how we evaluate ourselves. Perhaps we need to spend more time "being" in God's presence than "doing" all those holy things. And perhaps, we just need to be like a child. Realize that God loves us and we love him and go play.