I’ve been writing about purpose. We were all created by God and for God. Our pride gets in the way of this fact. Let me make this confession:

Part of me wants to be noticed. Part of me wants to be made much of.

I’ve covered this before, but I bring it up again because I stumbled across this while reading Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning tonight:

For the disciple of Jesus, “becoming like a little child” means the willingness to accept oneself as being of little account and to be regarded as unimportant.

The context comes from first century Jewish culture. Children were regarded with little importance. Manning points out the contrast with today’s culture. Children weren’t cherished by mainstream society so much when Jesus said that the greatest in heaven must become like a child.

It’s extremely important to hold to this perspective while uncovering our calling. If our vision is to only make much of ourselves and put us up on a pedestal, then that vision is empty.

With that vision, failure is a blessing. Success would be a curse.

Failure is a blessing because we would be forced to rely and trust God. We would run to our Father with skinned knees and tears. Success would be a curse, because in our own eyes we would lose our need for God. When we think we can do it on our own, we can find our prideful independence increases, and our humble dependence decreases.

I don’t enjoy feeling unimportant. I think most people don’t. However our willingness to be regarded as unimportant must increase. We all must become like children.