What kids teach us about God’s work in our lives

Living with an almost four-year old is like living with a three-star chef: He cooks up something authentic, bold, and surprising every day.

At least once a day, my son, Daniel, does something that makes me stop whatever I’m doing and wonder: “How did he come up with that? Where did he learn that?”

I’ve been teaching Daniel how to pray at bedtime. I get down on my knees next to the bed and fold my hands. He gets down on his knees and folds his hands. I say the words. He repeats the words with a few of his own thrown in. He would be one of those people we say is just “going through the motions” as we gossip about him at the restaurant after church.

Until last night.

We were done praying and he was under the covers. I was singing him a goodnight song. Suddenly, he got back out of bed and onto his knees next to me.

“I’m going to say a prayer for Papaw and Mary,” he informed me. Papaw is my dad. He is in chemotherapy for aggressive cancer. Mary is a close friend of ours who recently received a cancer diagnosis. She begins treatment soon. She has two young children and runs her own business. This is going to be tough.

I said, “OK, buddy. That’s a good idea. Go ahead and pray. I’ll bow my head and pray with you.”

Instead of praying the way he’s heard me pray every night since he was born, he began singing his prayer like a cantor. He was making up the tune as he prayed. That was cute. What made me shake my head in amazement was that he was rhyming the prayer. For example, if he ended a line with “Mary” he tried to find a word like “berry,” “hairy,” or “very” to end the next line. If he couldn’t come up with a real word, he would make one up.

It was awesome. If you have kids, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

When my wife was pregnant with Daniel, I worried about whether I could teach him everything he needs to know to live a rich life. I don’t mean arithmetic and how to drive. I had this notion in my head that I would even have to teach him how to breathe and digest his food. When he was born, he refused to breast feed. I thought: “I’m even going to have to teach him how to like boobs!”

As it turns out, I do teach Daniel a lot. Others teach him, too. But most of his development and growth is happening as if by magic. His creativity and imagination, his problem-solving and vocabulary are advancing wonderfully. None of this happening in a way that I could predict or script. He’s becoming his own person and interacting with the world in his own way. All of this is independent of my control or design. Most of the time, all I have to do and sit back and enjoy watching him come into his own.

Watching Daniel grow up reminds that God is actively creating beauty and vitality in the world independent of my control. The best gifts I ever received–life itself, the love of my family, my son, nature–are not gifts that I made for myself or put on an Amazon wish list. The gifts that keep giving are giving from a mysterious place I cannot access.

Whatever we ask or imagine for ourselves seems great until a gift comes into our lives that seems like it comes from so far beyond us.

And that’s because it does come from so far beyond us.

We need to leave room in our lives for the unimaginable blessedness and goodness that comes as a gift from God. That means opening our eyes each day to the miracles happening around us and in us. That means casting out counterfeit goodness and disposing of distractions. That means making fewer demands of God, telling him exactly what we want and how we want it. That means admitting just how little we control and possess in this world and thanking God that it is so.

What miracles do you see in your life today?

Grace and peace.