Like children

The children were brought to Jesus because they found in Christ one who was ready to show kindness to the most insignificant and apparently worthless.

The disciples saw things differently, and rebuked those bringing the children, perhaps thinking that they were beneath their Master's dignity.

Christ, all compassion, welcomed the children readily, as representatives of just the kind of need he was willing and able to meet.

The lesson to learn is that all of us must receive the kingdom of heaven as little children if we are to enter it: no sense of entitlement, no claim of worth, no demonstration of merit, but—helpless and powerless in ourselves—receiving it as a gracious gift.