Already Theirs: The Kingdom of God Belongs to Children
One of my earliest memories is kneeling on the living room carpet at three years old, praying the sinner’s prayer, hoping Jesus would accept his invitation into my heart. I had no idea what toddler sins required such divine intervention, but I remember thinking, Sure, I guess I have to do this.
But I also remember thinking, I already know God.
Long before I learned the adult language of repentance or invitation, God was familiar to me. God was in the soft weight of my mother’s hair falling like a blanket around my shoulders. God was in the stray cat who wandered onto our porch right after my sister died. God was in the oak tree whose branches held me like a sanctuary.
Fundamentalist Christianity told me I needed a prayer to access God, but God was already with me. I clasped my hands in prayer because that’s what the grown-ups told me to do.
I wonder what might have happened if those hands had stayed open?
People were bringing children to him in order that he might touch them, and the
disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and
said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as
these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive
the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. And he took them up in his
arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. - Mark 10: 13-16
The story of Jesus blessing the children has become so familiar that we forget how shocking it once was. The paintings we see show a calm (usually very white) Jesus with happy, plump, rosy-cheeked children on his lap. But in the ancient world, children were fragile, marginalized, invisible, and vulnerable. Many didn’t survive childhood. Their social value was sometimes lower than enslaved people.
So when the children come to Jesus and the disciples try to stop them, Jesus is enraged.
He does not simply tolerate children.
He welcomes them.
He protects their access to him.
He blesses them with the same touch he used to heal the sick.
He does not ask them to repent.
He does not ask them to understand doctrine.
He does not ask them to pray a formulaic prayer.
He simply holds them and says, “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them.”
It is, quite literally, the opposite of an altar call.
Between 2017 and 2021, I wrote and piloted a VBS-style day camp centered on creation care. At Wild Wonder, kids sing songs about our wildly wonderful world, take “nature breaks” to watch clouds and listen to birds, and gather around a long table for what we call The Daily Feast set with fresh bread, jam, fruit, cheese, tiny cloth napkins, and jars of flowers.
Pastors often ask whether the curriculum includes “The Gospel.” I tell them gently that the Gospel isn’t located in a single moment. The good news is woven throughout the whole story of God’s reconciliation of all creation, and we get to participate in that here and now.
They don’t love that answer. What they really mean is:
Where is the altar call?
Where is the sinner’s prayer?
Where is the moment the child becomes worthy?
But if Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven already belongs to children, what exactly do they need salvation from? What prayer could be more powerful than the knowledge that they are already good? Already beloved? Already heirs of God?
One morning at camp, a little girl saw the table set for The Daily Feast and whispered, “Who is that for?”
“It’s for you!” our camp leader said.
She paused, confused. “Oh…I thought it was for someone important.”
Our leader looked right at her and said, “It is for someone important. It’s for you.”
That moment was truer to the Gospel than any altar call I’ve ever seen.
Children are innately spiritual. They wonder easily. They feel deeply. They pray without realizing they’re praying. They have mystical experiences adults dismiss because they lack the adult language to try to explain it.
Children experience God in their bodies through touch, play, affection, curiosity, silence, and tears.
The first step in nurturing a child’s spirituality isn’t instruction, it’s simply noticing.
What if you could nurture your child’s faith from a place of love rather than fear?
What if their salvation was never on the line?
What if your child already knows God, and your work is simply to notice together?
What if Jesus meant exactly what he said?
The Kingdom of Heaven is already theirs.