The Ministry of the Interior

Like a child.

Izzy had an imaginary grandmother when she was little, and the two of them had such grand adventures. Izzy would tell me how they ate pink cookies, white icing, marshmallows and sugar cubes -- all the time. Her grandmother lived in a treehouse, got hurt by a porcupine, swallowed by a fish and captured by Pink Panther. Together they would jump and dance and twirl together but rarely take naps because her grandma had a jiggle-wiggle bed. Hard to take naps on a jiggle-wiggle bed, as you can imagine. Izzy's grandma broke her back while jumping on the trampoline and had to have all her skin cut off but made a remarkably quick recovery. Izzy, at three, told me about this seeming miracle quite matter-of-factly.

Imagine. I once asked Izzy if I could wear her pajamas, and she replied simply, "Yes, when you get little."

Oswald writes about "the robust, simple life of the child of God" and calls us to "launch out in reckless belief that the Redemption is complete." But the passage tied to today's devotional refers to us as "a royal priesthood." The juxtaposition of what seemed to me like contradictory metaphors sent my thoughts whirling in a variety of directions, and I'm really not certain I can bring them all together.

At the beginning of 1 Peter 2, Christians are encouraged to be like newborn babes craving pure spiritual milk. Eugene Peterson puts it like this in The Message: "Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God's pure kindness."

The next few verses are devoted to a stone analogy -- Christ as the cornerstone, us as living stones. Then verse 9: "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." And, in his reflections on the passage, Oswald again evokes the beauty of childhood in his description of the Christian as one devoid of self-consciousness.

I watched with mixed feelings as my children's delight at traipsing to the mall in pirate costumes or tutus morphed into horror at the thought. Self-consciousness awoke, and childhood delight seemed to slip away in equal measures. As my youngest, Izzy's transition from childhood to young womanhood is freshest, and at times, I can still catch glimpses of the innocence and reckless abandon that marked her childhood.

We are to be like children. We are priests. I'm wondering if the two roles are more alike than they first appear. Both share the ability to suspend disbelief -- to allow room for mystery, for the supernatural, for life to be more than science or the senses allow. Both drink deeply of God's goodness. Both are freed, at times, from the awkward confines of self-awareness.

When I enter into the Holy of Holies, where God is present, when I sit on his lap and lay my head on his bosom, I am freed from myself. I am a priest. I am a child. I am perfect because I am in Christ.