My wife recently gave birth to twins. This has caused me once again to spend some time reflecting on the marvelous grace of God poured out to us through the experiences of life. Infants remind me of how much He is a supplying and sustaining God.
One of the ways that I see this revealed is in how God caused human infants to be so dependent and helpless. In Matthew 11:25-28 Jesus starts out the passage by thanking the Father that He had revealed these things to children. In the context what is revealed is the mighty power of God in Jesus. He has just denounced a list of cities for rejecting Him after seeing the mighty work of God. There is an innocent acceptance in children. In infants there is an absolute assumption of acceptance. They do not try to win our hearts with any showing of specialness. The cry because they are hungry and it lets us know that they are hungry. They cry sometimes just because they want to be held. There is no doing something for us so that we will do something for them. And quite frankly the idea of quid pro quo here is ridiculous. They are helpless and need our care. The reason that I am drawn to this passage where Jesus thanks God that these things (His majesty and power) have been revealed to children is because of the way it ends. Jesus says "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." To understand a little better what Jesus is saying here we can look at His interaction with children recorded in the synoptic gospels (Matthew 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17). This story is the one where the disciples are shooing the children away. (As a side note according to Matthew's account this follows the disciples dispute about who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven. In that dispute Jesus said that they needed to become like children to enter the Kingdom (Matthew 18:1-3).) Jesus said to the disciples who were sending the children away that they needed to become like children to enter the kingdom of Heaven. What is a child like? They are dependent. Our idea of children is influenced by our culture. In Jesus' day a boy became a man at his bar-mitzah. A 12 year old would have been an older child. Little children in Jesus day would have been those who were probably six and under. Little children are dependent. They have great needs. They anticipate our love. I think that Jesus' call to come to Him and He would give us rest is in essence a call to become like children. We should remember that we have great needs. We should come with needs depending on Him. We should embrace the unchanging love He's given. Until we become like children we will always be bringing our wood hay and stubble to Jesus. We seem to always be impressed by what we have to offer. None of us has anything to offer. Our best efforts appear as polluted garments (Isaiah 64:6). All we have or ever will have that is of any value comes from Jesus. We truly are like dependent infants producing nothing but poop (Philippians 3:8) and in need of everything. The best we can do in this life is turn our focus to Jesus and bask in the love of our supplying and sustaining God.
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