Advice from an Anonymous Elder on How to Inherit The Kingdom of God

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—Geronda, how can I inherit the Kingdom of God.

—Jesus tells us we must become like a child

—What is a child like?

—A child receives each moment as if it is a new word.  He doesn’t have an encyclopedia of facts to interpret his experience according to; he just experiences.  An adult thinks he is a master of each moment and each moment comes and goes without him taking anything from it for he already has his encyclopedia of facts and knows all things before they are given to him.  A child does not know, but he learns.  Adults know but don’t learn.  Each moment surely is a word of God’s and whether it is his rod or his embrace, if we are attentive and know it is from God and trust God, God will reveal something to us with it.  Something about us or something about him or both.

—I don’t understand.  Am I supposed to forget everything?

—No.  Just don’t take pride in anything you think you know.  When I was a child my father held the seed of an apple core in his hand.  He told me, “This seed, when planted in the ground, becomes an apple tree.”  I couldn’t fathom how such a small thing could produce something so big and tall.  But then over the years I watched that seed grow into a branch in the ground and that branch grow thicker and taller until it resembled a tree.  The word of the Word of God which God has implanted in our hearts, is like this seed.  God sends his Love upon it each day sometimes with rain and sometimes with sunshine.   If we keep this word planted in our hearts and lift up each moment to God with prayer and gratitude, it will grow.  Just as God ever stretches beyond our experience so does the nature of this word within us.  But we must not let our imagination travel beyond what is given to our heart or let our mind outrun our experience.  We must only attend to what God has given us to experience and to learn from this experience in this moment.  Knowledge of God obtained through imagination will pass through many conceptual mutations—growing, developing, and expanding, dissolving, and being replaced.  But Knowledge of God born of the hearts intuition stays the same and yet is ever growing as much as we are receptive to the love of God.  Knowledge born of the imagination dissolves in the presence of God.  Thus we must bow our imagination before each moment ready to receive God Himself, his excess instructing us and expanding us.