Rediscover the Qualities of Being a Child

Rick McKinley is the author of 'Jesus in the Margins: Finding God in the Places we Ignore.'

Writeup from webpage:

God landed in the margins. On purpose.
Jesus is our ultimate model for finding identity, acceptance, and
legitimacy from the Father. As we pull back the curtain on His life,
we discover that Jesus knows what it's like to be marginalized.
He understands how it feels to have society shove you to the side,
to not really be accepted, and in the end to be totally rejected.
He can identify with life in the margins because when God came
to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He landed in the margins.
On purpose. And He chose to land there because it's in the
margins that broken lives get mended, prisoners are set free,
and the poor hear the Good News.


It is a very easy read and I only have 2 chapters to go (about 20-25 pages), and I started it about a week ago. The subject matter can (and maybe should) be heavy but Rick has done a great job not making it so. I think it was done on purpose. The audience is for people who "live in the margins" of life and they really do not need to be put into deep psychoanalysis anymore. Just be told the great and glorious Gospel of Jesus.

But the reading is great for myself as it soldifies the image of Jesus and the fact that he was born to a poor carpenter and hung out with "drunkards and gluttons" and he will meet you right where you are and that you do not "have to have it all together" to meet Christ. And really, the "margins of life" are where all the normal people are.

One specific chapter was on being like a child as Jesus commands us in Matthew 18. Rick recaps this with 4 specific choices we must make each day that will have has live like a child of God:

1. Walk in the wonder of worship
2. Trust Jesus with childlike faith
3. Live unashamed before Jesus
4. Walk in innonence

This captures childhood about as best as anything I have read. The older we get and the more "mature" we become we gain skepticism and realism and lose wonder, trust, and innonence that defines childhood.

If we could make our daily choices using those 4 guidelines, I wonder how much easier life would be? I wonder where my stress level would be at? I wonder how I would spend my time throughout the day? I wonder what amazing truths I would realize by taking away the "life filter" that I apply to everything? I wonder what things I would do for other people without even thinking of the consequences (for the better, obviously)?

What about any of you?