Leading our children from cynicism to hope…

It was December when she said it.

We were snuggled up together on the couch, under a quilt; we’d just finished reading the story of Jesus healing Jairus’ daughter. What a glorious story! And then she said it, quiet, to herself,

“God doesn’t do that anymore.”

My breath caught, struck that her unguarded childlike words would reflect what I too suspected, way down deep:

Does God do that anymore?

The truth was, though I’d read those words dozens of times, I wasn’t quite sure if God “did that anymore.”

My own inner doubts seemed harmless enough, honest questions, right? But once I heard my own unbelief spoken softly into the air, through the very lips of my precious daughter, the one I have devoted my life to discipling into a follower of Christ … then I knew something great was at stake:

My life is becoming her doctrine.

I closed my eyes and saw the sand in the hourglass–time running out.

See, childlike faith can quickly turn to cynicism. Certainly, we cannot (and should not!) shelter our children from all disappointment. God does not say yes to every prayer. (This too is grace.) But children give us the gift of unfiltered speech:

The Emperor has no clothes!

They see right through religion. What is real? We’re often afraid to speak the obvious, afraid it will expose our own inadequacies, and as a result we sometimes miss seeing a real God do real stuff in the real world every single day.

Later, months later, we sat on the couch and read The Hungry Thing. When all the adults cannot fathom was schmancakes and hookies and gollipops could possibly be, the small child speaks up with the clarity that only humility can bring:

Pancakes, and cookies and lollipops!

This year’s read through the Bible has only been a lesson in childlikeness. Believe what the Word actually says. Keep living as if “biblical” is real, because it is, even if you don’t feel it or see it at first.

Eventually your “real” will rise to meet biblical. Don’t give up.

What does this mean for my mundane? It means refusing to give up. It means meeting the questioning gaze of my daughter when she prays again and doesn’t see the answer she’d hoped for. It means honestly admitting that I also don’t understand sometimes. And it means celebrating every glimpse of the miraculous in our mundane. (Four times recently Heidi has prayed on her own to find a misplaced item and each time God immediately answered. She prayed for a specific need on Wednesday and had it clearly answered. Mundane miracles start tiny!)

It means cultivating an atmosphere of childlike faith and steadfast hope. It means rejecting cynicism, doubt, discouragement, and unbelief. It means come to the Father again and again in faith, in prayer, asking for everything from miracles to meals.

Let’s not lose our children to cynicism. Let’s commit afresh to seeing His kingdom come, in our homes and in their hearts as it is in heaven.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Rom. 15:13)

{Happy weekend. Thanks for reading.}