Sometime last week I realized we would be reading about Aslan’s death right around Easter. Most nights, after I’ve tucked my oldest in bed, I settle on the rug in the other boys’ room and read half a chapter of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. If we’re early to bed, maybe a full chapter. We’ve read it before, but I’ve realized there are quite a few things that we’ve done before that Luke doesn’t remember because he was only two or three. We’re circling back to a few of them.
Most days, we have at least one discussion about Jesus. Maybe it’s when we read the Bible at dinner.1 Maybe it’s after church when we discuss what they learned in class. Maybe it’s when we are delighting in creation or talking about our sin and why it matters. Either way we’ve talked about what it means to follow Jesus a lot and often.
I remember when my oldest three were tiny: maybe 6, 3, and just big enough to sit on a tiny chair with a toy. We’d do circle time and sing Jesus Loves Me, memorize a Bible verse, and read a story most days. They got a little older and we added one more boy and we read The Jesus Storybook Bible until it was ragged and I patched the binding with duct tape.2
During the pandemic, we read the Bible and every week we talked about a different attribute of God. How can we know who God is and what does it even matter? They memorized short psalms and the Christ hymn in Colossians. Recently, we read through the gospel of Mark tiny snippets at a time. Who is Jesus? Why did He do these things? When we finished Mark, we moved to Proverbs and we’ve discussed what it looks like to follow Jesus and grow in wisdom.
Last weekend, we read the part where Aslan died. Our ten-year-old remembered what was going to happen. The smaller two did not. I didn’t stop at the end of the chapter but read a few pages into the next. Enough for them to know that Aslan did not stay dead.
On Easter night, we finished that chapter. Aslan romped and play with Susan and Lucy until they weren’t cold and tired anymore. They rode on his back to the witch’s palace to free the captives. We started talking about sin. What difference Jesus makes to our sin. How Jesus came3 and died and resurrected so that we could friends with God. At some unexpected point, past bedtime, my eight-year-old announced that he wanted to be friends with God too.
We talked to both the eight-year-old and the almost-six-year-old4 and told them that they could tell God they wanted to be friends. That they accepted his gift. We prayed with them after explaining that following Jesus wasn’t about magic words. It’s not like Harry Potter where Hermione told Ron he was pronouncing wingardium leviosa wrong. God is looking at our hearts.
I’m cautious when sharing the gospel with children.5 We talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. As small as mine still are, I do not ask them if they want to follow Jesus or invite them to pray.6 It’s too easy for kids to do things because an adult wants them too. Instead, I wait for them to bring it up. And each time, they’ve spent months asking questions, some weirder than others,7 before speaking out loud that they are ready to follow Jesus.
Talking to your kids about Jesus is no guarantee. Parenting never has guarantees. That’s my deepest fear when talking about parenting: that any of it sounds like a formula. Do this and get this in response. It does not work that way. I also don’t share this so you will be discouraged. I remember six or eight months ago a friend shared that her child had responded to the gospel and I felt momentarily discouraged that one of mine that was a similar age had not. But I remembered that God is at work in each of us in different ways and rejoiced over her child. Instead, I want to encourage you to keep going.
What I know is this: at each step of the way, what we’ve done with the kids to teach them about Jesus has felt like a waste. They were tiny and didn’t remember it. They constantly interrupted and asked about totally unrelated things. They gave silly answers as if we had never discussed anything in the Bible before. It has never felt beautiful or effective. It’s been frustrating almost every single time. All along the way I’ve remembered that God’s Word doesn’t come back void and I’ve asked God to take the tiny offering (our part) and do something with it that we can’t (God’s part). It’s grace. It’s grace. It’s grace. It’s grace for me to believe. It’s grace for my children to believe. It’s grace for anyone to believe.
Stick with it. If you’re sharing Jesus with small children, don’t quit. Do it in every way you can think of. Most days is acceptable; every day is probably an unrealistic standard.8 Tell stories. Read stories. Be age-appropriate. Talk about your own life of following Jesus. Rehearse the whole story of the Bible. Talk about theological ideas in the simplest words you can find even if you aren’t sure they understand them. Pray for them. Talk to them about how your allegiance to Christ shapes how you live. Let them form relationships with other people who follow Jesus. Do not give up.9
No formulas. No guarantees. Just a stick-with-it. We never know what God is doing or how long it will take.
It truly is “most days.” That standard is something I can aim for; perfection is not.
It’s still my absolute favorite.
I always tell the boys that Jesus lived as a human to show us who God is and to show us what we should be.
As soon as I told the eight-year-old that he could just tell God he wanted to be friends, the smallest raised his head up and said he wanted to be friends with God too.
Even more so with other children. At least with mine, I know what they have and haven’t been taught.
I would with a preteen or older.
Just last night, my eight-year-old asked me where Satan lived. I told him that I had enough to do without trying to keep up with Satan too. In actuality, I tell them, “we don’t know” so so often.
This is something that I would hesitate to say on Instagram. From experience, commenters are steadfastly dedicated to reading the Bible aloud to their children. For the rest of us, “most days” is a beautiful gift.
Right now I’m thinking about a friend who was grown children who have walked away from everything they’ve been taught about faith. I still pray for them and I know she does too.
LISA. [applause and tears and gratitude here]
Thanks for sharing this, it’s the encouragement I needed today. I have a 3 year old and a baby and it can feel so frustrating trying to talk to the 3 year old about faith, for all the reasons you described. It’s nice to know it’s normal, I’m not alone, and it doesn’t mean things won’t turn out well. I find it so easy to feel slightly panicked instead of rest on the grace of God!