A Childlike Week

Especially on Mondays, I wake up with the weight of the week on my shoulders. It’s not that there’s always a crisis I’m bracing for up ahead, but that there are so many contexts I’m embracing up ahead. Home, work, church, friends, neighborhood…each one calls for attention, and I want to give it fully. But how to give myself to each one at the right time, in the right way, meeting the right need, is often what concerns me on a Monday morning. 

Today as God met me, Ephesians 5:1 & 2 spoke the direction I need for this week:

“Therefore be imitators of God…”

In my home, imitate God

In my work, imitate God

In my church, imitate God

In my friendships, imitate God

In my neighborhood, imitate God

So this is supposed to be helpful?! You might say it sounds like an unreachable standard. Yet, it’s the next phrase that brings it down to scale:

“...as beloved children,”

Little children stick close, wide-eyed to their parents’ actions, words, and body language.  They don’t overanalyze or second guess whether it was specifically in one context or another that their parents’ behavior applied, and so they indiscriminately imitate them. Blunders abound. Laughter abounds. Parents blush in embarrassment.

But God invites our eager, childlike imitation of Him, because His character and actions are applicable in every context, no filter necessary. It’s how Jesus lived on earth: “...whatever the Father does, the Son does also.” John 5:19.

When I stick close, wide-eyed to God Himself, what I’ll see in Him is love, as Paul continues in verse 2:

“and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us…”

Giving up self in imitation of God applies in every context of my week. Surely, blunders will abound when I’m more childish than childlike, but my Father is with me every step to pick me back up and show me the way again. “For I the Lord your God hold your right hand. It is I who say to you, ‘fear not; I am the one who helps you.’” Isaiah 41:13