Faith of a Child

"Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”  (Luke 18:17)

Between bursts of rain drops and gusts of wind this past week, my husband and I did some work around the house, getting ready for flowers and mulching. Pulling the incessant supply of weeds from the flowerbeds is, believe it or not, an activity I enjoy. It gets me outside in the fresh air doing something at my own pace that takes very little know-how. Mostly, however, I enjoy it because it reminds me of a glimpse of God’s kingdom I once witnessed while weeding my garden.

When my daughter was around two years old, she and I were outside on a sunny summer afternoon. While I pulled weeds, she played happily with her miniature garden set in the dirt nearby. In the midst of humming and digging with her little spade, she abruptly stopped what she was doing, turned around and looked beyond our backyard. She waved once and said, "Hi Great-Grandpa!" The words stunned me, since at the time she had one living great-grandfather in another state whom she had never met. I looked in the general direction of her gaze, expecting to see someone – our elderly neighbor, perhaps – that could cause her to say such a thing. Instead, I saw only grass and trees. I turned back to her and marveled at the wonder and intensity in her gaze – she was utterly absorbed in what she saw. She sat that way for a moment longer and then just as abruptly turned back to humming and digging in the dirt, as if nothing had happened.

Although I tried in my humanness to come up with a "logical" explanation, I already knew. Not only did I believe that my daughter had seen the spirit of one of her great-grandfathers, I instinctively knew that it was the specific spirit of her paternal great-grandfather who had died nearly twenty years before she was even born. I had never met him, but I’ve been told that he was a wonderful, godly man. My instinct was confirmed a week or so later, when my daughter pointed to a picture of my husband’s grandpa in my in-laws’ house and said, "There’s Great-Grandpa."

There is something to be said for the faith of a child, isn’t there? God understands it perfectly well. Whereas I sought a logical, understandable explanation for my daughter’s actions, she simply embraced the encounter with her loved one as normal. She was not surprised, frightened, or otherwise jarred by the experience. It was simply a part of her summer afternoon. There’s no telling the miraculous things we could experience if only we simply accept the sovereign power and presence of our Lord in our midst, rather than explaining Him away by our imperfect logic.

As the earth comes alive this spring, let us remember that the Lord has a handle on the complex. We need only concern ourselves with the simple fact that God is God. He always has been and He always will be. Accepting that simple truth makes the miraculous not only possible, but normal for a child of God.