There was an incredible story that took place in rural, Forsyth county in Georgia. A family had recently returned from a weeks-long vacation and heard some noises—what sounded like crying—maybe an animal in the woods nearby—so they called the police. The officers arrived to investigate—you can even see the footage through their bodycam.

They approach the sound closer and closer and they see that it’s coming from a plastic bag. They cut open the plastic bag and you can hear their surprise and horror at finding a crying baby girl. You can see the father of the family there too on his knees utterly shocked:

“I didn’t believe it.” “My kids kept saying, it’s a baby.” “I said no it’s an animal.” A healthy, almost full-term 7 lb baby girl—which the officers named India. Her mother was never found, and nobody ever came to claim her.

I’m not merely telling you this story to highlight that it was divine intervention that saved this baby girl’s life, though it was. If the family hadn’t returned home that very night from vacation, you can imagine what would have happened to her? She survived because of God’s providential intervention and care.

I’m telling you this story to show you just how helpless babies, infants, are. There’s no more vulnerable and helpless creature on the planet than babies, human infants. Human infants are far more helpless, far more vulnerable, far weaker than even animal infant babies.

They are completely dependent upon the nourishment, the love, the care, and protection of their parents, and particularly their mother. Without a mother’s care/protection—or some sort of outside, external parental care and protection—a baby will die—within hours. Just like baby India, who if it wasn’t for God’ intervention would have died if that family hadn’t heard her cries and called the officers.

This is the kind of dependence upon God that Jesus calls us to this morning. This is the kind of helplessness and whole-hearted reliance upon God that Jesus uses a small child as an object lesson to illustrate, as the kind of faith required to enter God’s Kingdom.

The only way to enter the kingdom of God—heaven—eternal life—is to do so by way of faith—and specifically with the object of that faith being Jesus—which shows up in the way you live your life every moment of everyday in complete and absolute dependence on your Father in heaven for your nourishment, your protection, your salvation, your every need—physical, emotional, spiritual—just like an infant child depends on its mother. And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning. A childlike lesson in faith and the preciousness to God of both a child and a childlike faith in God.