When I was five or six years old, our family lived on a farm in Norseland, Minn.
     About a half mile behind the barn and pasture, we had a spring-fed lake that was my favorite playground during the summer. After I finished my chores, my cousin Larry and I would race to the lake, strip off our clothes and plunge into the cool water. No matter how many times we did it, that plunge never lost its refreshing joy.
     You probably have a similar experience that instantly brings to mind freedom, adventure and wild abandon. And we each want our lives to be like that all the time. But instead they seem to be moving in the opposite direction. We get bored and jaded, life becomes as bland as stale lefsa and lutefisk, and what used to be peak experiences lose the power to satisfy and renew us.
     As we become adults we begin to structure joy out of our lives in pursuit of our self-determined goals. We become addicted to control. We acquire an increasing burden of obligations, ambitions, agendas, guilt and expectations. If we're religious, we add in our attempts to act like "good Christians."
     The childlike abandon we yearn for is freedom from self. We long to discard our needs, doubts and fears—our old life—on the bank as we race into a carefree encounter with life. But there's no way out, no way back.
     Then along comes Jesus.
     Like children, Jesus says the darnedest things. At first we think His words are cute, his parables are so charming, until they start to become inappropriate and disrupt our carefully arranged lives.
     Here's an example.
     "Verily, I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (John 18:3,4).
     Why did Jesus depict humility in the form of a little child? Why not as an ascetic recluse or as a pious priest? I think he knew each one of us has a childhood memory like the one I described that encapsulates everything Jesus wanted to convey.
     The Hebrew sciptures are full of exhortations to humility.
     The Proverbs especially emphasize the point: "With the lowly is wisdom" (Proverbs 11:2). "Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud." (Proverbs 16:19)
     All the prophets condemn pride and affirm humility. For example: "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones" (Isaiah 57:15).
     The Talmud expands on these. The grapevine, the rabbis said, displays the mystery of humility, because the lowest-hanging grape clusters are the best. And the famous Rabbi Hillel, commenting on Psalm 118:5 ("When I make myself humble, I am promoted."), said of himself "My humiliation is my promotion and my promotion is my humiliation."
     But exhortations like these can be construed as "how-to's," and that's not what Jesus had in mind.
     Jesus distills humility down to a single snapshot of a child sitting on His lap, with no agenda except the pure fun of being there.
     The picture doesn't even have to do with the child's relationship to Jesus. It certainly has nothing to do with the child's performance or behavior. In a few minutes, the kid's going to hop down from his lap and go play with friends. But the picture of humility will still be valid.
     Like Jesus, that child is abandoned to the moment and dependent on a loving father for all his needs.
     We want to be that little child, but there's no way back except through the cross. Through repentance. Through being "born again."
     I started to write a column on forgiveness. But I realized humility comes first.
     Without the humility of Mary, Christ could never have been born. Without Christ's willingness to humble himself, there could be no redemption or means of forgiveness.
     He "made Himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2: 7,8)
     All the great saints of the past discovered the secret of childlike surrender. As believers, we have an innate need to completely abandon ourselves into the hands of our loving Father.
     In the ne'ila service on Yom Kippur, the congregants pray:
     "What are we? What is our life? What is our goodness? What is our virtue? What is our help? What is our strength? What our might? What can we say to you, our Eternal God and God of our fathers?
     "Indeed, all heroes are as nothing in your sight, the men of renown as though they never existed, the wise as though they lacked knowledge, the intelligent as though they lacked insight; for most of their actions are worthless, the days of their lives are like nothing in your presence: 'So that man has no preeminence above a beast; for all is fleeting.'
     "[Nevertheless,] you have chosen man at the very inception, and you have recognized him as worthy of standing before you."
     The only worthy Man has died for us, and now we can stand before God with Him, in Him, as Him. Repentance brings us to this understanding.
     Now, at last we can strip off our old identity, leave it on the bank and take the plunge, as our heart's desire is fulfilled forever.

Ole's morning bible study is available here.