Childlike Faith

When I was a child, I stood in wonder as I gazed upon the stars and the man in the moon.  I still remember the first time I looked at him magnified.  I was six years old, lying in my grandparents’ front yard looking through Grandpa’s binoculars.  That was a long time ago, but I remember it as though it were yesterday. 

I looked into the heavens, and I saw.  I saw that there were wonderful worlds far far away, and I was awestruck.  It made me dream dreams so big that it would take a big God, a mighty God to put them into place.  I thought anything was possible.  I had faith.  I believed.

Children have the ability to see what we as adults cannot see.  There are far fewer ideas, walls, presuppositions, and misconceptions.  As we grow older, it becomes more challenging to “see”.    The Lord calls us to come to Him as children, i.e., have childlike faith (Matthew 18:1-5, Luke 18:15-17).  This type of faith allows us to come to Him without pretense, and with less of a tendency to limit Him.  It is a faith that prohibits boundaries to belief.  With age, hopefully, comes wisdom.  However, with age we also bear the brutal scars of reality, and that reality can preclude us from trusting the God of the universe to come through as He promises to do.

I have been a Christian a long time, but sometimes I need a reset to my faith, to remember in whom my faith rests.  It is important for us to remember that dreams and fantasy and faith are part of our core existence.  They are as necessary as the air we breathe, for in them lies the hope of possibility, the hope that dreams really do come true, that there is something more to this life than we can see.   In 1897, Francis P. Church, editor of the New York Sun, wrote a letter in response to an eight-year old girl who had a crisis of faith.  Here is an excerpt from my journal regarding his editorial:

Twenty-five minutes ago, I finished recounting the hardship of a long trial.  It was cathartic and beneficial.  A bowl of homemade chili, a cup of oolong tea, and two Manner cookies later (a favorite treat from Austria), I am listening to Harry Connick, Jr.’s Christmas album and enjoying the beauty, grace, and provision of an enormous tree, recently decorated by friends and family.  The world may not be right yet, but it is peaceful in this moment, and I reflect on the coming Christmas season, a season of childhood dreams, of awe, of wonder.  The candles are lit and a copy of Frances P. Church’s response to Virginia O’Hanlon is in front of me.  She needed, as we often do, a little reassurance that her faith was not unfounded:

“Virginia, your little friends are wrong.  They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.  They do not believe except they see….man is a mere insect in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.  Alas!  How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!  It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.  There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.  We should have no enjoyment except in sense and sight.  The eternal life with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished…

“The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see…Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world…there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.  Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.   Is it all real?  Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding…He will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

Mr. Church refers to skepticism and a skeptical age, something with which we can identify.  Yes, even a century ago the very things that today rob us of our sense of wonder and awe, of childlike faith, were alive and well.  I love how Mr. Church paints the glorious victory that faith brings.  He declares that not even the combined strength of the strongest of all men from all generations could tear the veil that covers the unseen world.  No, it takes faith to “push that curtain aside” to “view the supernal beauty and glory beyond.”  Yes, faith is the crux of belief.  And only when we believe can we see.  While we understand that Santa lives in the land of imagination, we can look to the original St. Nicholas and then to the One who inspired him to give generously to poor maidens who had no dowry.  He is the One who calls us to come as children, have the childlike faith and look to Him, i.e., beyond what we can see.

“Now faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

He is a big God, a mighty God.  When I think of the earth and the heavens and how He made them in six days, I am awestruck.  When I think on how He rescued His people from slavery, I am in wonder.  When I think on how He sent His Son to die for you and me, I cannot begin to fathom it…or Him.  And yes, I believe.  I believe the stories I have been told since I was a child.  They are part of me, giving me understanding of who He is to me personally and not just to my parents and grandparents.  I am thankful for my upbringing in the church, and I am thankful that He continues to delight me with more of Himself.  And yes today, even now, when I look into the night sky and gaze upon those burning orbs, billions of light years away, I am still struck with wonder.  It is the wonder that comes from knowing that the great God of the universe, who is in all the big things from the laying of the foundations of the world to now, is also all about the details of my life.  It is the wonder that He is even bigger and more awesome than the beautiful black canvas before me.

In those moments of childlike faith, I know in my heart that He put the sky and everything in it right there for me to enjoy.  Perhaps so that I would remember how big He is.  Perhaps so that I would remember that He sees me.  Perhaps so that I would know that I cannot possibly comprehend how beautiful and amazing He is.  Or perhaps just because He can.  I love that about Him.

When I first gazed upon the night sky in wonder dreaming God-sized dreams, I did not fully grasp what He had planned for me.  As I continue to gaze in wonder and enjoy holding more pieces to the puzzle, I still do not fully grasp His plan…or Him for that matter.  But this I know: I am still in awe of Him.  And once again, when in His presence, I am struck dumb; I am a child, and I believe.

Until next time...

For truly, with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).  Amen to that!