Little Rocks and Jungle Gyms

"and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 18:3

My friend was at the park the other day with her 6 year old cousin and her cousin's friend. They began to pick up rocks they thought were pretty, the 6 year old girl then took a handful of rocks and stuck them in her pocket. When asked "why did you pick up all the rocks?" She replied by saying, "there all so pretty."
This story is a very cute one, but can also be very applicable to our spiritual walk with God. Jesus loved children, and in retrospect we are all children to Him. In Matthew 18:3 He said that "unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of God." This is not a new thing, I have probably heard this verse millions of times since I was little. But have we actually stopped and thought about it, before moving on with our day?
You see a child is someone who can not fend for themselves, who is completely reliant on some kind of "parent" figure in their lives to provide, shelter, food, warmth, clothing, etc... And so much like our relationship with Christ, we can not live with out complete reliance on Him at all times.
As I look back on my childhood I ask myself one question, "what happened?" As we grow up and start to become more of a follower of the world then an individual I can not help but think we have over complicated everything. You see as a child everything was either really simple or a mystery and wonder to us, we could spend hours playing outside with one stick and be completely satisfied. I remember that even going down the stairs could be an adventure to me, the jungle gym transformed from being a spaceship on Monday to a fire breathing dragon on Tuesday. The stick in my hand could be a laser gun at one moment then turn into a great battle sword the next. But now the jungle gym is just some wood nailed together with plastic, that stick is a stick nothing more. We have flown away from neverland never to return, and so we grow up. Our heads are filled with philosophies and math formula's, no longer can we be anybody we wont to be because we must forget imagination and replace it with logic and science.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that life should be all fun and games, but I am also not saying we should completely leave our imagination behind and abandon it for logic. There needs to be an equilibrium, we still need to see the wonder in this world, and the wonder and mystery in God. Not everything can fit into a dictionary definition and a petree dish.
And so I leave you with this,
Lord I pray for all of us, I pray that you would bring the wonder back to our hearts, that the world would be a new mystery to discover each day. I pray that we would become that child, who takes hand fulls of rocks, seeing them all as "pretty" and stuffing them into our pockets.