Can I teach them to trust?

Is it possible for a child to trust in God without having ever experienced his rescue and steadfastness in rough waters? How can you make sure a child understands the world’s perils and yet be secure in their ability to deal with them because of the cover of God’s security? How do you combat the fear that assails them much more than it did in years before the internet brought the world’s horrors fast and furious to a screen near you.

How do you establish a foundation of knowledge that is accompanied by wisdom and a faith that often defies reality?

How does a child who has not had to be between a rock and a hard place have the testimonies to look back on and have the evidence for trust.

Are the Bible stories and cartoons or even movies and shows enough? Depictions of heroes from long ago, who surrendered their weaknesses and dire straights to a majestic and powerful God that created mind boggling miracles to get them out of tough situations?

Do they get the Psalmist’s laments? When have they known a depression so deep, enemies so deadly and loneliness so acute that they can recognise themselves in David and other Psalmists’ cries to the Creator?

Can they relate the insidious subtle temptations of our time to the seemingly obvious misdemeanors of old? Sometimes the tales seem so black and white, good and evil rewarded accordingly – can they tell that some sins create generational problems for years afterwards?

In their short lives, have these children had the chance to fall so far short of God’s holiness that they cannot help but acknowledge that is is by His Grace that they are able to do anything good, achieve anything worth while?

When it has taken me years of trial and error, falling and getting up, foolishness and wisdom, grief and comfort, lack and abundance, mercy and numerous escapes from the fangs of the enemy, to more accurately see God’s hand, how can I expect the same from these little ones who ain’t seen nothing yet?

What can I say to make them see, feel and have the assurance and security of a God that I have come to trust through a lot of experience? Experience of many, many errors, pain and timely rescue and exquisite grace.