We are surrounded by all kinds of people. Each day we meet the young and the old, people with disabilities, those who are sick or very healthy, people of different ethnicity that have different colors of skin. At times we can even become judgmental, thinking that we are better than those other persons. We can underestimate those with disabilities, those who don’t speak our language, or those who are just too young. We even become selective and try to avoid those that we don’t feel comfortable with. But not Jesus. No! And today He reminds us that those little ones are welcomed into His Kingdom before everybody else. “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” And then Jesus gives us the parable about a lost sheep whose safety became more important to the shepherd than that of the 99 other sheep. We may wrongly assume that for one or another reason, we are better than someone else; but not for Jesus.
