Let the Children Come

Pray to Begin

Ask: ask the Holy Spirit to make your heart simple again, so you can hear Jesus the way a child hears a welcome.

Give thanks: nobody at this table is too young, too small, or too unimportant for Jesus.

Yield: set down everything you think earns you a place with God. Today’s passage is for empty hands.

Today’s Passage: Mark 10:13–16

Parents are bringing their children to Jesus so He will bless them. The disciples turn them away. What happens next shows Jesus openly angry, and then wonderfully gentle.

As you read, hold this: The kingdom cannot be earned. It is received like a child.

Mark 10:13–14 (BSB)

¹³ Now people were bringing the little children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them, and the disciples rebuked those who brought them. ¹⁴ But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and told them, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

The disciples are not trying to be cruel. They think they are protecting Jesus’ time. Children, in their world, did not matter enough for the Master.

Serious people still make this mistake: guarding Jesus from the very ones He came for.

And Jesus is indignant, openly angry. The Gospels almost never show Jesus angry. Here He is, angry in defense of the smallest people in the crowd. Let them come. Do not stop them. Then the great surprise: the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Mark 10:15–16 (BSB)

¹⁵ Truly I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶ And He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on them, and blessed them.

Now Jesus turns to everyone, with His most serious opening: truly I tell you. The kingdom must be received (dechomai), taken like a gift, the way a child takes one. Gladly. Simply. No pretending to have paid for it.

A child does not check a gift’s price or offer to split the cost. That is the only honest way to stand before grace. The grown-up who insists on earning it never gets in, not because the door is locked, but because he keeps trying to buy what is only ever given.

Then Mark gives us the picture to keep. Jesus takes the children in His arms and blesses them. Isaiah said God gathers His lambs and carries them close to His heart. Here He is, doing exactly that.

Personal Application

1. Where are you trying to earn what God wants to give you as a gift?

2. Who around you gets treated like an interruption, someone Jesus would gather in His arms? How could you welcome them the way He does?

Pray to Close

The central truth: The kingdom of God cannot be earned. It is received like a child, with empty hands, from the Lord who carries His lambs close to His heart.

Praise: the Shepherd who is never too busy for the small.

Confess: the pride that wants to pay its own way, and the times we blocked someone else’s path to Jesus.

Ask: for a child’s open hands before God today: glad, simple, and unashamed to receive.

Decision of the day

Today’s decision: I will thank God out loud for one gift I could never earn, and simply receive it, like a child.