DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Monday, September 10, 2018

People were bringing even infants to Jesus that He might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it.  But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Realm of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the Realm of God as a little child will never enter it.” – Luke 18:15-17

I once met a man, a farmer, a saint who though well into his eighties, still planted oak trees on his farm.  That old man understood what it meant to be a child in the Realm of Forever.

The New Realm of God is a Divine process by which the Present Moment weaves itself into the fabric of Forever.  Our faithfulness in this present day is our choice of possibilities that enter into the formation of the future.  Like that old man who planted oak tree saplings who shade under which he would sit, he in this small way set in motion the formation of the future.  One day, another child who sit in the shade of a choice he had made.

Christianity, when it does not regress into legalism and man-made rules, when it does not retreat into a nostalgic reverence, serves as an instrument into the unfolding of Forever.  Forever is not clinging to the past day after day, but rather Forever is weaving this day, these moments, into the tapestry of Forever, a tapestry not yet finished.  Christianity is thus creative as the Creator is creative.  The Creator may have rested on the seventh day, but on the eighth the Creator returned to work, this time with the ongoing work of unfolding that which was in its potentiality in Creation’s Beginning.  And so in being filled with potentials and possibilities, Christianity is always venturing into and in certain ways charting the course of the Future.

I observe that as people age they tend to either yearn for the past or dream of the future. There are souls in their aging who find comfort in rocking back and forth in yesterday and there are those souls who find vigor in planting saplings along the road into tomorrow.  This is why it is the children who can enter into the Coming Realm of God, these children no matter their age.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz