Dad had spent time in hospital with tuberculosis. A cold dry place was said to be good for him to get better. Kind friends from the church had loaned us a house. Other friends loaned us a cow. We had chooks and a vegetable garden - and fresh fruit in season. In those days the church had no special provision for sick ministers. But I am sure my two older brothers and myself had no idea just how tight for money our family was at that time.
Besides being a cold place and growing apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, nectarines and grapes, Stanthorpe is the centre of the Granite Belt. There is plenty of granite rock elsewhere in the state - go up Mount Inkerman and you will find lots of it. But the soil in that area is all decomposed granite and the farmer has to work his farm around large rocks too big to move. A visit to the Granite Belt is incomplete without going to Girraween National Park, noted for its large granite formations. One of them, Bald Rock, is on the border of New South Wales and is second in size to Uluru (Ayers Rock).
The National Parks hadn't been opened in my younger days. But I do recall a rock in the path on the way to our front gate. The path had a bend to get around it. I suspect that rock, if it is still there, has somehow got disappointingly smaller than I remember it. It was an important rock to young lads. It was the castle whose kingship was contested regularly!
Do kids still play "king of the castle"? Grown-ups do! All that pushing and shoving, talking and arguing… all to show that I am the greatest!
Did you know it was a running argument between the disciples of Jesus? And even when Jesus had died, come to life again and was about to hand all the responsibility over to them, they still had a big question to ask him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" ( Acts 1.6) At that point, they still hadn't given up the hope that one of them would be the greatest.
When they asked Jesus who was the greatest, they assumed it must be one of them. But Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 18.3-4). It is as if he was saying, "My friends, you won't even make it unless you change and become like little children!"
It wasn't so very long after this that some parents brought their little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. "But the disciples rebuked those who brought them" (Mt. 19.13). They hadn't got the message! They hadn't understood child-like faith or the seriousness of putting any cause of stumbling in the way of one of these little ones.
"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (v. 14).
That doesn't mean we have to be children - or to be childish - to enter the Kingdom of God. But there is only one way to come - with a childlike faith. No one is too young to respond to the love of God. No one outgrows the need to know the love of God.
The old words tell out the important truth -
Tragedy is so many of us think we have outgrown that childlike faith. We are busy proving ourselves - trying to become the greatest!
Then take the words of Charles Wesley's hymn -
Now there's someone who has a mature meaty adult outlook - and who wants a faith to match! But notice that he needs "the childlike praying love."
Do you know that Jesus loves you? Can you accept that as simply and directly as a child accepts a hug?
Have you accepted Jesus as your Saviour and Friend - just as easily as a child can reach up and accept a trusted hand to help them?
In so many children ways are just watching us to follow our lead in life. Do we look to Jesus as Lord of our lives?
Too often we have "suffered the children" - which isn't what the original meant anyway! - putting up with them, instead of learning from them the simple childlike faith that receives God's love and grace.
Don't put up adult barriers! Let them come! And let us come too!
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