I am a dad of two of the craziest, awesomest, smartest and coolest kids out there! Okay, enough of the cheesy parental bragging. On a more serious note most of my lessons regarding faith come from these two kids. I see how the innocence of a child can really come in handy when dealing with issues of faith.
In regards to the most controversial topic of the Bible my boys have the upper hand. This topic is not abortion, same-sex marriage or anything in regards to the deity of Christ. The topic is of the miraculous gifts of God. I argue, if we as Christians took all the “knowledge” we self-profess to have about and infinite eternal God, put it aside to activate the innocence of child-like faith there would be less disagreements and more life change. The following story illustrates this point.
The other day my two year old was shutting the car door. We try to give him freedom to explore his world so he was doing this all by his lonesome. He is a professional door closer he rarely makes a mistake This is because he has qualities of a perfectionist. However, this particular time the unthinkable happened…he shut his finger in the door.
I was across the house in his room; mom was standing right by him when the tragedy happened. From across the house I heard the heart stopping billowing cry from my son. I stopped what I was doing and made record time across the house and into the garage. Mom swooped him up in her arms and held him close; crocodile tears flooded the shoulder of her shirt. I watched in disbelief as my child suffered this immense amount of pain on his little finger. I felt helpless.
We did what any parent in this situation would do, we tried to distract him with food. The pain was too much, the food made no impact on the severity of the wound. I took him into my arms and held him. He was saying something to me. Amongst the sobbing it was hard to determine what he was saying. I listened closer. The words coming out of my 2 year olds mouth were, “pray?.”
I thought to myself, “ya, sure we can do that.” I began a prayer, “Dear Jesus, take the pain out and heal my finger.” He repeated every word after me and at the end shouted his favorite word, “AMEN!” The heavens did not open, a dove did not descend but the crying stopped he looked me in the eye and with all certainty and beautiful faith he said, “all better.”
WHAT? That was it? No big deal? No progressive healing? He was just done with the pain, because of a little prayer? I was convicted immediately on how I handle pain, prayer and healing. How much more can we do when we activate our child-like faith and stop walking in self professed head “knowledge?”