Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Ecclesiastes 1-2
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 10:21-24
Jesus: Thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Thank You for hiding Your mysteries from the wise and intellectual, instead revealing them to little children. Your ways are truly gracious. My Father has given Me everything. No one knows the full identity of the Son except the Father, and nobody knows the full identity of the Father except the Son, and the Son fully reveals the Father to whomever He wishes. (then almost in a whisper to the disciples) How blessed are your eyes to see what you see! Many prophets and kings dreamed of seeing what you see, but they never got a glimpse. They dreamed of hearing what you hear, but they never heard it.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth saying again. Children and the elderly are too often, the throwaways in society, especially in ours. We have a tendency to think our parents don’t know anything. Because technology keeps advancing so quickly and each generation has so much technology at their fingertips, each successive generation begins to discard the older generations because they don’t use the latest game platforms or want to know information instead of looking it up on their smartphone – if they even have one. We forget Solomon’s words really are true, there is nothing new under the sun. Things come in different packaging, but because we haven’t changed in how we think, what we desire, how we relate to one another, there is really nothing new under heaven.
We would do well to listen to the wisdom of our elders and learn from their lessons so we don’t make the same mistakes they made. We could make it through like a lot better if we would pay attention to the simple rules our parents learned through their experiences and then applied them to our lives so we would succeed in some of the areas in which they failed. But because we too often believe our parents just don’t know anything, we end up making the same mistakes and we seem to never learn the life lessons that would help us if we would just pay attention and learn from them.
But what I really want to point out today is what we do with children. We could really learn a lot from them if we would. It isn’t until we start training them with our bad habits that they learn to distrust and hate and assume others are lesser or greater than they are. Just watch a room full of young children. They will usually play well together at a young age. Yes, they show tendencies of selfishness, they aren’t good at sharing their favorite toy and they often want their way. But it doesn’t take long for a group to figure out how to play together and none of the things that seem to bother adults get in the way of children.
Children don’t care about race. The color of a person’s skin doesn’t matter to them. They will ask questions of each other about why one is brown and one is tan and one is yellow, but they all play together without prejudice. To them, color of skin is about as important as color of hair. They just don’t care until we adults teach them something different.
They don’t care about socioeconomic status. How much money is in a banking account or what size house you live in or what kind of car they arrived in just doesn’t matter. They just see each other as someone to enjoy playing with on the playground. None of that material stuff matters to them. Until we adults teach them that stuff is important and they need to pay attention to it.
Physical therapists will tell you that if you moved like a child does when you bend or squat or lift things, the way they just do things naturally, you’d never be overweight and you’d never hurt yourself by lifting or moving the wrong way. But we learn bad habits early and move in ways our bodies were not intended to move and do things our bodies weren’t supposed to do. We can learn a lot from children.
If you listen to children, they will also tell you some pretty incredible things about God. They will tell you about His love and about trust and grace and forgiveness. They will show you many of His characteristics before we teach them how to cover up the better qualities He help them display as children. We can learn to laugh from them. We can learn to cry from children. We can learn to care about other people. We can even love them for no reason except they are people.
God hides His mysteries from the wise and intellectuals and reveals them to little children. Be careful that you don’t discard those children next door or down the street or in your house. God might be wanting to teach you His mysteries through them. If you think you are wise, you can bet He won’t entrust His wisdom to you. So keep your eyes on those kids out there. You might just learn something about the wisdom of the heaven from them.
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