Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."The other day I saw a little boy running along and he tripped and fell flat on his face. He was covered in mud and gravel with blood all over his knees and snot and tears all over his face, but his Mum scooped him up and hugged away the pain, getting covered in blood, snot, mud and tears in the process. He wasn’t embarrassed that she saw him in that state. He didn’t try and clean himself up before he could receive his Mum’s love. He just let her give him what he needed and she loved him no matter what.
I think we can learn a lot from children and their utter dependence on their parents. Sometimes we try and clean ourselves up before we come to God, when actually God wants us to come to him no matter what state we’re in. God loves us as we are. He knows all our thoughts, all our weaknesses and all our paradoxes. He doesn’t want us to sort ourselves out before we come to him, or wait until we feel a bit better before we talk to him. We don’t need to rehearse our prayers and make sure they’re articulate before we express them. God wants us as we are. He doesn’t want us to pretend we’ve got everything sorted out when we haven’t. He can handle our mood swings, our tempers, our bitter disappointment, our fear and our insanity. It’s only when we’re real and honest with him and come to him for help that we’ll receive the healing, transformation and freedom that we long for.
Maybe today we need to run to our Heavenly Father and allow him to clean up the blood, snot, mud and tears.