“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!She will give birth to a son,and they will call him Immanuel,which means ‘God is with us.’” (Matthew 1:23 NLT)
When we read this verse in Matthew, referencing the prophet Isaiah, we often get so caught up with the virgin birth and the reality of “God with us” that we can gloss over a small detail with big implications. God entered into our world as fully human – and still fully God – but he did not need to arrive the way he did.
God could have sent his son as a fully realized adult, ready for ministry. Instead, Jesus came to us like a child, and all that entails. He needed to learn how to speak, how feed and dress himself, how to read and write. Growing up, he suffered hunger, thirst, and, as Shakespeare describes it, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” that is to say, life and all it entails. In short, remarkable as he was, Jesus was still a child.
In turn, he calls for us to also be like children. In Matthew 18:3, he tells his disciples we are to turn from our sins and “become like little children” to enter into his Kingdom. This is an invitation to enter into a mutual reciprocation of posture. God doesn’t invite us anywhere he hasn’t already been. Even today, when God calls us into a neighborhood, a job, a relationship, or anywhere, really, he is inviting us into a space where he already resides. Even that phrase “called by God” illustrates that God is already there and is calling over to us, like one friend inviting another to sit as their table.
The question is: are we willing to be like children? Are we able to set aside our own egos, our preconceptions of who God is and how he works, and follow after his voice, like chicks following after a mother hen?