This was something to digest, having a one year old in my house seems as if my spiritual formation is at an end! Isaiah said: “And a little child shall lead them” (11:6) and we know Christ’s attitude to children (Matt 18). What children do is they break the divisions between private and public and the temptation to make my prayer life a separate, quite, secluded part of my life. A relationship with a child is all encompassing and everything happens in the moment. Only later do they learn to differentiate and compartmentalize their lives. Children break us out of the secluded routines and help us as the psalmist says: “…walk before God in the light of life.” (Ps. 56:13b) But, I be honest, a child’s screaming tests my ‘harmony’ in a big way – maybe it is helping me live my faith in the raw of the emotional day?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
A child's part in spiritual formation
“Children are our first defense against the deadening and flattening effects of disconnecting God and life.” E. Peterson
This was something to digest, having a one year old in my house seems as if my spiritual formation is at an end! Isaiah said: “And a little child shall lead them” (11:6) and we know Christ’s attitude to children (Matt 18). What children do is they break the divisions between private and public and the temptation to make my prayer life a separate, quite, secluded part of my life. A relationship with a child is all encompassing and everything happens in the moment. Only later do they learn to differentiate and compartmentalize their lives. Children break us out of the secluded routines and help us as the psalmist says: “…walk before God in the light of life.” (Ps. 56:13b) But, I be honest, a child’s screaming tests my ‘harmony’ in a big way – maybe it is helping me live my faith in the raw of the emotional day?
This was something to digest, having a one year old in my house seems as if my spiritual formation is at an end! Isaiah said: “And a little child shall lead them” (11:6) and we know Christ’s attitude to children (Matt 18). What children do is they break the divisions between private and public and the temptation to make my prayer life a separate, quite, secluded part of my life. A relationship with a child is all encompassing and everything happens in the moment. Only later do they learn to differentiate and compartmentalize their lives. Children break us out of the secluded routines and help us as the psalmist says: “…walk before God in the light of life.” (Ps. 56:13b) But, I be honest, a child’s screaming tests my ‘harmony’ in a big way – maybe it is helping me live my faith in the raw of the emotional day?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment