Some of Jesus’ friends asked Him who was greatest.

it’s a question of pride.

One could argue that being great or doing great things is a legitimate reason to be proud. So, the guys were essentially asking Jesus who had the right to be proud.

Jesus took a child and set him in the middle of this gathering of grown men. He told them that they needed to be converted, changed, to become like this child, or they wouldn’t even register on the scale of greatness at all. Then He said,

“Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”

I’ve asked again and again, “How exactly is a child humble?”

In light of the previous entry: a child is humble because she embraces what her Father says about her.

A child’s opinion of herself is largely formed by what the people who love her say about her through their words AND actions.

As children grow they become aware and able to make their own observations and evaluations. The ways of the world teach them to establish and defend their own fortresses of opinion. This is the process of becoming proud. Growing UP, instead of down. Trading the high opinion of the Father, for the low opinion of self and other.

If i tell my three year old son that he is superman, then, in his world, he IS superman! He is living in the precious window of trust and absolute possibility.

This is the humility that Christ is calling us to live in.

The Father’s word and action concerning you is this: you’ve been bought with a price. Your life has been assigned a certain value. That value happens to be the blood of a beloved Son who does no wrong and lives fully in love. This is God’s opinion of you.

It is pride to reject this opinion and trade it for another based on who you think you are, what you think you’ve done and what anyone else has said about you.

True, child-like humility is to embrace the Father’s opinion: I am worth the blood of His Beloved Son. Can you say that? Can you force your throat to choke out those words? As you do, you will realize that the opinion you’ve held concerning yourself, the one you’ve been so zealously defending, is piteously low in comparison to the value ascribed to your life by the Father.

May we be changed, converted over from this self-evaluating, self-defending system; made like little children again, trusting whatever our Father says about us. May we humble ourselves, embracing the greatness that has been assigned to our lives.