Faith and Humility

I started this blog two years ago with the encouragement of a close friend.  Let's call her Pearl Girl.  She and I had often exchanged thoughts in writing via email.

In January of 2014, I featured her reflection on birthdays as a post.  Today, I'm happy to share another piece of her writing.  Enjoy!

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This morning I found myself reflecting more on what we discussed last night (Mk 10:13-16).  What does it mean to receive the kingdom of God like a child?  What aspect of children are we as believers to emulate?  I went back to my notes from my New Testament 1 class for some direction, and this is what I found.

According to my professor, there is an inherent link between faith and humility.  In the context of Mt 19-23, Jesus is teaching about Israel’s faith and readiness for the messiah which was shown through humility.  Children were used as a metaphor of humility, and the humility of the disciples in leaving everything to follow Jesus was also honored (Mt 19:13-14, 27-30).  In contrast, those who were prideful, believing in their self-sufficiency, lacked faith in Jesus.  The Pharisees rejected Jesus, believing that they knew better, and the rich young man thought that he already did what was necessary to enter heaven (Mt 19:1-12, 16-24).  In Lk 9:46-50, Jesus identifies with children which shows that he identifies with the humble.  He honors and lifts up the lowly, such as children and those in need, who were considered “the least” because they were humbled.  Humility is necessary in order to have faith.

This makes sense to me.  As a child knows his/her place before adults/parents, so we as children of God are to humble ourselves before God, acknowledging who he is, that he is so much greater than us.  In this way, our need for and dependence on him will become obvious to us.  To have faith is to acknowledge that we need God for salvation, for life, for our every breath.  We see that we need him in the big and small things in our lives, in the temporal and the eternal.  In the same way, children know that they are not yet adults.  They do not have the wisdom, the strength, the independence, etc. of adults.  They are still in need of adults until they are grown.

Also, not only are we to be like children, but God gives us the right to become his children (Jn 1:12).  In this way, he offers us unconditional love and acceptance.  We then, as his children, are to come before him in a stance of humility as a child would a parent.  This also includes the trust, dependence, and love a child has for his/her parent.  Like PA’s example of Tobias eagerly waiting for PT to come home and yearning to spend time with him, we also are to have that kind of eagerness to be with our heavenly father.  If we really see him as our father who loves us unconditionally, how can we not run to him when we are in need and most of all, long for and simply enjoy being in his presence?

The more I reflect on this, the more I am humbled that Jesus, who was in very nature God, chose to come as a man, a servant, humbling himself to death on a cross for our sake.  We all need the child-like faith and humility to know our place before God.  We truly need him and depend on him every day for everything.  All that we have is given from him.  Children, then, play a role in reminding us that we are children of God, we are in desperate need of him, and we are wholly loved by him.