7 weeks down! Next week will be 2 months! Keep it up!

We had a number of wonderful readings this week – from Isaac not learning his father’s lesson about lying about his wife to a shift in the readings in Isaiah to some narrative for a change, but I want to focus on our reading from Matthew and point out something that you likely missed. Jesus tells his disciples that the key to becoming the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is to humble yourself as a child. Now in today’s society that hold children in high regard, this doesn’t seem to make much sense. If you are a parent, your life today likely revolves around your children and fulfilling their needs and encouraging them to grow in a number of ways. We fill our schedules with events and programs to benefit our children and help them grow into well rounded adults. But in the time of Jesus, this was not the case. Children were considered to be among the lowest of society and had no real value attached to them until they were old enough to begin to provide value – i.e. – able to help with the crops or animals or whatever the family business produced. Jesus’ call to humility wasn’t a call to place ourselves in a position of reliance alone, which kids today still need adults to provide for them. His call was also to discovering that our only worth is to our Heavenly Father – that the world around us places no real value on us unless we can produce value.

Our worth does not come in who we are or what we do, but in who God is. We have eternal worth because God has chosen to adopt us into His family. The world around us could care less about us outside of what we can do for the world. But God loves us regardless of what we can do. God’s love is what gives us worth. And it is being considered worthy by God that makes us the greatest in the Kingdom of God.