Luke 9:47 Meaning Jesus

Before a word is spoken the thought is already seen, for love reads the mind directly and answers what is truly being asked beneath the surface. Into the middle of minds arguing over rank, a child is set, and the answer to the whole quarrel is placed quietly at the center. The child is chosen because it makes no claim to be greatest and needs no rank to know its worth. It stands for the part of the mind that has not yet learned to compare, and so has not yet learned to be afraid.

The correction to ambition is not a better argument but a change of vision. Set beside the wish to be great, innocence simply shows what the mind was reaching for all along, a worth that was never in question and never had to be won.

Child: the undefended innocence at the center of the mind, the worth that makes no claim and needs no rank to be whole

Arguing about who is greatest is the mind's whole business, and it goes on silently even among those who have left everything behind; the ego renounces and then wants to be the greatest renouncer. A child is simply placed where the argument was standing.

A child has no idea of being greater or lesser, because comparison has not yet been taught to him. He is not humble, which is only pride standing on its head; he is unaware of himself as a separate somebody. That innocence is not lost forever in childhood; it comes back to anyone in whom the constant self-measuring stops.