Child-like trust

The children here sleep anywhere. Crammed with seven people into a three-wheeled auto taxi or sprawled in their mother’s lap on the bus, head cocked at a curious angle, mouth agape. The bus rocks, sways, jerks to a stop. They are oblivious. The streets are noisy, the bus crammed with people. The driver sounds the horn to clear a path through the streets; it is deafening. Still they sleep on. I find it amazing, this ability to sleep anywhere, anyhow. Sometimes I am jealous.

Children are so trusting. Sometimes I try to rest on the bus. I close my eyes and let my head drop forward. But with the next stop, the next large sway or jerk, my eyes jump to the window again. Where is the bus going now, I wonder. What obstacle do we face? Why are we tilting so far to the side?

But the children, they sleep. The swaying, jolting, shaking—it is of no account when they are tucked into their mother’s arms.

Unless you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven…

I watch the children pressed into their mothers’ laps and I ask God to make me like them. It’s not that I want to be oblivious to the traveling of the bus, but I want my heart to continue resting and trusting when I feel it rock from side to side over unexpected dips in the road. I don’t want my heart to be impatient when I feel the vehicle jolt to a stop in a traffic jam before I’ve arrived where I want to be. I want to live with the assurance that no matter how bumpy the journey, there are hands that hold me, will carry me through, will whisper, keep resting. I know where we are going.