"Only God Knows Best"

ILL. BRO. THE RIGHT REVEREND C. ROBERT TOWNSHEND, 33°
Bishop of Georgian Bay, Huron Diocese (Anglican), Ca.

"Let the children come to me and do not hinder them. It is to just such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs. I assure you that whoever does not accept the Reign of God like a little child shall not take part in it." (Mark 10:14-15)

The greatest good news ever to break into our existence is the Good News of God's love. The God who created you loves you so much that He continuously acts in your life and in your world so that you and I and all persons can have wholesome life. This is Gospel! This is Good News. Those of us who belong to the Christian community believe that we see this reality at its clearest in the life and person of Jesus Christ. One of the things that we do as a community of followers of this Christ is to gather together regularly to hear the Good News proclaimed and to rejoice and celebrate because of it. The second thing we do as His followers is to see and experience whatever is happening in the world and in our lives against the background of what God has done in Jesus Christ, our Lord. For these and other reasons, we are to be people of joy and people of hope.

I have an announcement to make to you today; God loves you! But that is only half the story, Great that it is, because the moment you really begin to hear this Good News you raise the question: "How do I respond to it? What do I do about it? How do I accept it into my own life, make it my own?" Into the Gospel lesson, read by our Sovereign Grand Commander, Jesus once again gives us the answer. "People were bringing their little children to Him, to have Him touch them, "Mark tells us in (Matthew 10), but the disciples tried to "shoo!" them away. Here were Jesus’ closest followers trying to shield Jesus from the little children. Oh how they were misunderstanding what their Lord was all about at this point! Jesus would have none of it. In Mark's words, He "became indignant", when He saw what the disciples were doing. "Let the children come to me," He said. "It is to just such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs," He said. "I assure you that whoever does not accept the Reign of God like a little child shall not take part in it". Jesus said these things. It was part of His good news!

Early in His ministry, Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for their's is the kingdom of heaven." Oh how blest, how complete, how fulfilled, how happy are those persons who are poor in spirit. In the Greek translation the word that Jesus uses for "poor" means absolute destitution, total poverty. What did He mean? Jesus obviously isn't saying that it is blessed to be in a state of material destitution. Rather, He is reminding us that we are dependent upon God for everything in life that has any meaning for us. Everything! God is the source. And the person who is most blessed recognizes how poor he or she is without God and God's grace; how helpless, how powerless, how hopeless, how lifeless. The person who is most blessed is the one who recognizes how spiritually empty he or she is without God. The person who is most blessed is the one who recognizes how dependent he or she is upon God for everything and, therefore, gives himself or herself over to Him completely with childlike trust. "I assure you that whoever does not accept the Reign of God like a little child shall not take part in it."

When you begin to understand this you begin to understand Jesus better than ever before. If you want to know who Jesus is you must understand Him as the One who, at every moment of His life, empty Himself, recognizes His poverty of spirit apart from God, and threw Himself in childlike trust and dependence upon the Father. "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23:46)

In baptism, in the Christian community, we talk of original sin of mankind and the original sin of everyone of us is the refusal to trust God to show us the way to fulfillment and to give us the means of fulfillment. The original sin of mankind and the original sin of everyone of us is the conscious decision to do it "My Way", i.e. Frank Sinatra and his song. There is an unforgettable scene in Elie Weisel's Account of Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp. A 10-year old boy is accused of conspiring against the Nazis and is condemned to be hanged. All the other prisoners were lined up to witness the execution. Because the boy's body was light, he did not die quickly on the gallows. The other prisoners looked on in stony silence as the body twitched in its death agony. Suddenly, a voice cried out, "Where is God?", "Where is God now?", and Elie Weisel said he heard a voice deep within himself answer, "God is up there on the gallows, dead!" And God was dead for Elie Weisel for a very long time thereafter.

We have to recognize what tragedy may do that to people. But the opposite is also true, we need to get hold of this reality if we are serious about trusting God. The Universal experiences of suffering and pain and loneliness and disappointment and betrayal on death can move us closer to God if we let them. We may use these experiences as opportunities to sink our spiritual roots more deeply into the Being of God. We may use these experiences as opportunities to throw ourselves upon God in childlike trust as we never have before.

Trusting in God does not mean you know everything is going to turn out. It does mean you know that everything is going to turn out for the best, because God only knows the best! Trust God! Like a child!

God is God and we are not God and God is good. The secret of wholeness of life for us is to trust God, to be God every day of our lives. "For God is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory." "I assure you that whoever does not accept the Reign of God like a little child should not take part in it."