Excerpt from Matthew 18:1-7

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Reflection by Donna Schaper

I wanted to know how to ship my dog on Continental Airlines.  Exasperated by non-response, I finally wrote their robot, "Please give me your snail mail address."  She responded, out loud, "Sorry, we don't ship animals like that."  I didn't want to ship a snail. I wanted to ship a dog.  Any child would have understood, especially the kind that announce out loud that Aunt Emily "sure is fat."

The trust that Jesus puts in the small and the slow, the child and the snail, never ceases to amaze me.  I live in the world of the false adult and the slow fast.  Consider the amount of time all of us spend on efficient, corporate web sites and 800 so-called free phone calls, staffed by robots.  Why are they falsely adult?  Because they claim efficiency only to deny it.  They show what George Orwell meant when he said the "enemy of clarity is insincerity." False adults have learned insincerity and can no longer communicate.

Never ask a web site a question with your sound on.  "She" may respond, loudly, telling you they don't ship snails, which question you never asked in the first place.

How do false adults avoid the slow fast of the 800 number?  We get clear about efficiency and how it knocks the child out of us.  How do we become childlike?  We stay intimate with sincerity.

Prayer

O God, as we live in more and more impersonal spaces, keep the child in our heart.  Clarify us and keep us sincere. Amen.

About the Author Donna Schaper is Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church, New York, New York.

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