I was reminiscing with my six-year-old grandson about my parents – his great-grandparents – telling him stories of their lives as missionaries in Africa and in the West Indies. He never knew my dad, but he thinks he might remember my mom “just a little bit.” I want him and his brothers to know and understand and treasure our family’s heritage. He is growing up in a world where those stories may be one of the things that gives him and his brothers the courage to stand fast, because our family is living proof that God is good. God is faithful. He is worth obeying and they can put their hope in him.
I don’t remember exactly what story I was telling him but it must have been one of my folks’ more hair-raising adventures because at the end he added his own conclusion. “… And now they are with Jesus where they are safe,” he said, and that’s the bottom line of the story of any disciple of Jesus. It took a six-year-old to remind me.
I know his childlike faith will be challenged and stretched. It may even falter at some point, but I pray that he will always come back to this truth, that following Jesus is worth it in the end, whatever the cost.
And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to Him, “Do you hear what these are saying?”
And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise? From the lips of children and infants You, Lord, have called forth Your praise.” Matthew 21:14-16
