You Must Be This Small To Ride
When our kids were toddlers, they were too small to ride some of the more daring rides at the major theme parks. At the entrance to these rides was sign with an exaggerated ruler that declared: “You must be this tall to ride this ride.” And if you are not “this” tall, you’re out of luck.
The ride’s safety mechanisms (lap bars, seat belts, over-the-shoulder restraints) are designed for a particular size of person. If you’re smaller than the specification, you could get hurt.
In Luke 18, Jesus offers a “ride requirement” sign of his own. In verse 17 he says, “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
Jesus is saying, “There’s no height requirement to enter the kingdom. There is, however, a posture requirement: you must receive the kingdom with wonder and joy and innocence.”
If children teach us anything, they teach us to live with wonder. I didn’t realize how much I’d lost my capacity for wonder until my wife and I had our daughter. Whether it was her first bite of ice cream, her enthusiastic experience with her first birthday cake or her fascination with the concept of opening presents, she pursued life with wide-eyed amazement.
If you’re a parent, you know how maddening it is to spend forty dollars on a toy and have your toddler toss it aside to play with the box it came in.
Or maybe you have high hopes for your Little League player’s baseball career. But he keeps missing ground balls because he’s fascinated with dandelions and captivated by butterflies. We get annoyed when they’re distracted because we sense they’re missing the point of the game. But maybe we’re the ones missing the point. The point that God is inviting us into wonder, into awe, into an awareness of beauty that’s required for us to enter the kingdom.
In her book Let’s Talk, Dr. Michelle Watson Canfield says, “Many researchers note that a girl’s confidence peaks at the age of nine, confirmed by two women in the book The Confidence Code for Girls; Taking Risks, Messing Up, and Becoming Your Amazingly Imperfect, Totally Powerful Self. Their research reveals that girls under the age of twelve make friends more easily, have greater self-confidence, and don’t really care what others think about them. But somewhere after that they lose their way.”
And it’s because we lose our way, that Jesus calls us to find it again, so we can enter the kingdom.
My youngest daughter is ten and is playing lacrosse for the first time. The other day she played in a game where a girl on the other team didn't realize that she was going to score on the wrong goal. Despite all the yelling from the parents that she was making a mistake, she scored anyway. And when she realized her error, she shrugged and smiled as if to say, “Oops. I got confused!”
As parents we were terrified of how we’d feel if it happened to us.
But she didn’t care, and it was beautiful that she didn't care.
In the grand scheme of her life, it was an insignificant mistake.
As adults, there are times we allow culture and pressure and shame and the expectations of others and our own insecurities to tell us that the only thing that matters is performance; there’s no room for wonder. But Jesus says, “My kingdom is not about performance. My kingdom is about responding joyfully the invitation to know me,” and if we can't receive it as a child, we can't receive it at all.
Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.” If you’re stuck on your spiritual journey, if you sense your heart hardening and your angst growing, pray for wonder.
It’s a prayer God loves to answer.