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I’m holding my sleeping granddaughter while contemplating the lines from today’s Gospel: “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” She’s lying peacefully in my arms, not knowing the words to any prayers yet; but, in a sense, she is a living prayer teaching essential wisdom. She hasn’t learned to consciously listen for God’s voice, yet she communicates God’s grace. Just by being alive and resting in divine presence, she teaches me that there is prayer before words. It is this simplicity in prayer preceding language that helps me toward heaven. This divine simplicity is akin to the breath of life that God breathed into the man in today’s first reading, making human community possible.
Jesus encourages this simplicity of heart as a prayer path. In abiding in God’s grace, I glimpse the glory of heaven. In the busyness of my life, littered with worries and preoccupations, I can easily lose touch with the joy of simply resting in God’s love.
How can we recover this divine, child-like simplicity in our own prayer lives? Perhaps it is through silent contemplation of the beauty that surrounds us. The visual language of our churches wraps us in grace, as do the natural wonders around us. Maybe we can abide in that wonder as a way of being with God in a child-like way.