Earlier this week a parishioner shared a story with me. There was a young boy, Mitch, who was celebrating his birthday. He was turning 5. Like all young children, he was eager to count the numbers of each birthday. It meant he was growing up and getting to be what he always wanted to be: a big kid! So marking his fifth birthday was a big deal for Mitch. It was one year closer to that illusive mark of being a “big kid.”
The family had all gathered for Mitch’s birthday, especially his grandfather. Mitch and his grandfather are close. They see each other several times a week: sharing walks, throwing a baseball back and forth, and, of course, enjoying grandma’s oatmeal raisin cookies: a favorite of both of them.
After the birthday meal, the cake and ice cream, Mitch seeks out his grandfather and they talk. In a short time, Mitch, filled with birthday joy, turns to his grandfather and says, “How old are you, Grandpa?” His grandpa answers, “Well, Mitch, I am eighty-one.” “Eighty-one!” Mitch repeats, “Wow!” Then Mitch thinks for a moment and says, “Did you start at one?”
Children possess honesty and a generosity that we adults somehow outgrow. But Christ calls us to embrace the uncomplicated but genuine faith of a child: to love God and others without condition or expectation. For Mitch, the notion of being eighty-one was impossible to imagine. He loved his grandpa and was sincerely surprised by his age.
A child-like wonder and faith means never being discouraged, never becoming cynical or jaded, never stop being amazed and grateful for what life brings each day. A child’s faith is not complicated or compromised by ego or expectation. When Mitch faced his grandfather and did not really comprehend the length of his years, he still accepted, with happiness and joy, what some of those years had meant to him. Mitch did not grasp the reality of eighty one years of life, but he still appreciated the wonder of it.
For all of us, adults, the power of such a simple faith seems hard to imagine. To possess a faith that is able to overcome fear, the complexity of everyday life and all our responsibilities seems hard to grasp. It feels at once naïve and yet inviting. Such a faith may seem unattainable, but it is not. It calls us to stand, like Mitch did before his grandfather and, in sheer wonder, be awed by what we see and hear.
Christ calls us to the simple faith of a child: to love without condition and with a sense of awe of whom God is and continues to be for us. Only in embracing such child-like wonder, kindness, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness can we attain the true greatness that is in the Kingdom of God.
When was the last time you stood in wonder and awe of something you just couldn’t imagine and still embraced it? That is the gift of a child’s faith. That is the call of our readings this weekend. So when you come to church, leave your cynicism and pessimism at the door. Be what God has called you to be, simply a child of God. So when you enter the church this weekend, recapture that childlike faith. It just might lift your spirit!
Fr. Don
