Luke 10:21 Meaning In That Same Hour Jesus Rejoiced

The truth stays hidden from the part of the mind that trusts its own cleverness, because that part meets everything with judgment and calculation, and love cannot be reasoned into a mind braced against it. What is called wise here is the ego's careful defending, and its very prudence is the wall that keeps the gift outside.

What is called a babe is the mind grown simple enough to receive, one that no longer needs to be right and so has room to be shown. The revelation asks not for a sharper intellect but for a quieter defense. The point is direct: these things are not earned by force of understanding; they open to whoever lays the guard down and is willing simply to be taught.

Father: the Source of the mind, love itself, from which its true identity comes. Heaven and earth: the whole range of mind, from the truth it rests in to the world it seems to look upon. Wise and prudent: the ego's clever, defended thinking, the part that reasons and guards and so shuts the gift out. Babes: the mind made simple and open, defenseless enough to receive what it cannot argue its way into.

The wise and prudent live in the head, and the head cannot receive what is being pointed to, because it turns everything into a concept and files it away. Thought reaches and closes its hand on air.

A small child has not yet built the thick screen of opinions and labels that stands between a person and life. The child is open. What the clever mind keeps missing arrives in him easily, and the joy in this hour rises from that: the deepest things are not earned by cleverness. They surface the moment the mind grows quiet enough to let them through.

Cleverness can become a locked door. The one certain of his own understanding grips it too tightly, and that grip is a quiet pride that leaves no room for the gift being offered. The cure is the trust of a small child, who need not be the cleverest and so can simply receive.

Gratitude pours through him because he sees who is truly giving. The gift and the Giver are one light seen from two sides, and the open hand takes in more than the clenched one ever could.

Knowledge fills a person so completely that nothing new can enter. The learned have answers arranged for every question, and truth, which comes only to the empty, finds no room and passes them by. The hiding is not done by anyone; the wise hide it from themselves by being full.

The childlike are available because they do not yet know, and not-knowing is the receptive state, open the way an empty cup is open. What enters such emptiness comes as delight rather than as information, which is why the moment broke into thanksgiving. Scholarship can only stand outside, describing the door.