Ministry Free

    The other night my daughter came into my room just as I was about to fall asleep.  If she comes in the middle of the night, she gets to hop in bed with us for a bit.  If its at the front end of the night we go right on back into her bedroom.  This isn't nesessarily some kind of behavior modification thing as in the middle of the night it takes me a little longer to muster up the energy to take her back to her bed. And, well, daddy likes that his little girl wants to cuddle.  That won't last forever, they get big much too fast.

   This night I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she was scared.  It being the frond end of the night, it was back to her room we went.  Since she was a little girl, we have taught and shown her the "I Love You" sign.  She still can't really do it.  It comes out looking something like the "hook 'em horns"...which we are working hard to break (its pretty close to the middle finger to her Aggieland raised mother), but she's trying hard and she knows what she is trying to do.  As we walked back to her room in the dark, she held both her hands out in front of her making the "I Love You" sign.  I found this pretty curious (and cute) so when we got to her room I asked her why she was holding the "I Love You" sign out in front of her while we walked to her room.  She responded, (in a somewhat you should know this daddy tone) "Because, God is bigger than the boogie-man!"

   This was one of those moments, and their have been a few since she joined our family, where immediately came to mind, "Out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength..." (Pslam 8:2, ESV).  The little girl gets it.  What she did is not something her mother or I taught her.  I don't think it is something you can teach a three year old.  Ask yourself, what is faith?  Its the action of belief.  We teach our little girl everyday about Jesus.  How He loves her, How He made her, How he protects her.  We read her books about faith and Christ, we tell her bible stories every night, we sing songs about God...obviously we show her Veggietales.  On her own, she took all that we have taught her and acted on it.

  God is bigger than the boogie man.  The boogie man is scary, bad, evil and he lives in the dark.  Light disperses the dark, and the dark can't stand against it (John 1:5).  The light is Christ (v.4).  God is Love.  When Love goes before us, nothing can stand against us.  What the little girl did was prophetic.  Prophecies in the Bible often were not just monologues given to the prophet by God, but actions of symbolic power directed by God, and executed by the prophet.  Ezekiel laying on his side for 390 days is an example of prophetic action.  It is important to remember that contrary to popular belief, prophecy is not a sort of holy future telling, but rather messages from God to his people.  I don't know if the little girl knew what she was doing, but she was delivering a message from God.

  Yet, as I thought about it later I was struck by another message delivered in her action.  My little girl, that night and always, has always trusted me when I said it was time to go back.  I have never once had to look under her bed, or in her closet, or behind the curtains.  It, moreover, is dark in the hallway to her room.  She braves that not only with me to get back to her room, but to come to me.  What struck me was that the little girl has complete trust that 1.) she can come to me and I will help, and 2.) the simple action of me taking her back to her room means everything is okay, and she doesn't need to be afraid.

  I am an earthly daddy.  The truth is that, try as I may, I cannot protect her from everything in this world.  There are monsters out there that are not imaginary, and are not afraid of daddy's.  Good daddy's don't like to think about that, because good daddy's are ready to viciously defend their children from all-comers.  They are willing to do so unto death.  The idea of a situation where they could fail...is discouraging.  Yet, I am still the one the little girl comes to in the dark, in the middle of the night.  Her trust for me is explicit, her trust in me, as a babe, is immutable.

  My word is enough for her.

  Our relationship has lead her to a conclusion that is inherent in its nature.  The nature of our relationship is of nurture and protection.  All this in spite of when I get frustrated with her, or loose my temper, or hurt her feelings (we have a practice to apologize to our children when we wrong them, to do otherwise really is prideful idiocy.  Because, of this, our girl feels free and has the freedom to express her feelings to us, which gives us a chance to apologize when need be and calmly explain why she is in trouble when an apology is not appropriate.  That's really an aside, call it Ashton's Parenting Tip of the Day).  God, Our Heavenly Father, does not hurt us.  His relationship with us is perfect, even though we stray, and when our faith trembles he is firm (2 Timothy 2:13).  And, yet, all too often I don't get off my bed to go get help from him.  I don't trust him enough to brave the shadows, knowing all I have to do is go to Him, and He will care for me.  I think very few of us do.  The world doesn't seem to function in a way that shows many people do at all.

   I once told my dad that I had concluded that walking the path of faith just means getting back to where we started as kids.  I would give anything to have that purity of trust my little girl has, the one I know I had at one point when I was a kid.  I don't know how that works from a soteriological sense, but I know it is truth.  There was a reason Jesus called the little children unto Him.  It was more than a metaphor to adults about the importance of "child-like faith."  Children get Jesus.  I watch my girl and my boy closely, because their prophetic actions are formed in the depth of God.  And, while it is my responsibility to raise them in the fear and faith of Jesus Christ, to be loving human beings of good character, we are remiss when we neglect to hear the Word of God spoken through the actions of those whose "angels always behold the face of" our Father (Matthew 18:10).