What is a Child?

Hi, this is Cynthia Dowling, and have you ever thought about the question, “What is a child?” You have probably heard a lot of people say a lot of things, just as I have. In fact, you may have heard some of these things yourself: someone to have fun with, someone to carry on the family name, someone I can live my dreams through, someone to be a real pal, someone I can call my own, someone who will take care of me in my old age, and even someone to save our marriage. Yikes! These are all tall orders for a child who can do nothing for itself, comes into the world with huge needs, and is very demanding. If a child can fulfill even one of these goals, that's impressive! Going back to the beginning, let’s recapture what God says about His created child Adam in Genesis 2:7. God says, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” What is a child to God? A living soul. That living soul has an eternal destiny, and that living soul will make choices along the path of life affecting that destiny. Moving forward in scripture, Jesus loved children. The Bible tells us that when the disciples tried to keep children from coming to Him to be blessed, He was much displeased; and in three of the gospels He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God.” So, from God's perspective a child is a living soul that He dearly loves and wants to come to know Him.

And where did God put Adam and Eve after He created them to make sure they were going to get the best possible start? He put them in the garden of Eden, and the Bible tells us He gave them a job to “dress and keep” the garden. Can you imagine being trained by God to keep a beautifully amazing garden producing the most wonderful food? That's what God did for Adam and Eve. Not only that, but He also spent the cool of the day with them talking to them, enjoying their company, and letting them get to know Him personally. Wow! The God of the universe humbled Himself to spend time with the man He created and the woman He created. How incredible! They must have learned to become quite the master gardeners! While caring for the garden, they could think about God's instructions and constantly be overwhelmed with God's love for man and beast. God's actions reveal just how precious a living soul is. So maybe the question is, “what does God want me to do for my child,” rather than “what is my child going to do for me?”

My husband and I like to walk, and one of the places we like to walk is a botanical garden. While we’re walking, we see all kinds of volunteer caretakers weeding and planting and carrying away brush. We also see the new saplings planted in just the right sunny, well-watered spot, and many times with some kind of protective fencing to keep the deer, bunnies, and whatever else likes to munch on young tree bark away from that sapling until it gets established. The same thing is true of the apple farm where we buy apples. There, they prune those trees, even paint some of the trunks white, and have quite the year-round protocol to protect those apple trees from disease, critters, erosion, and all kinds of other things. So, just as farmers are zealous about taking care of their cash crop in protecting them, in scaring off predators, in fertilizing them, in weeding them, and in training them to be the most productive cash crop possible, our goal as parents should be even higher than a cash crop is to a farmer. Yes, we should protect our children from evil, scare off predators, weed out bad habits, and train them to be productive family members, but that is not enough. A child's living soul must be prepared for eternity. And the best time to “train up” that child to have eternity in his heart is when he is young. Just as Jesus said about a child, “for of such is the Kingdom of God.” How do I get eternity into my child's heart, you may ask. Well, first it starts with having eternity in your own heart. How important is the eternal to you? We've all heard the saying, “Values are caught rather than taught.”

I was all excited about having my first child; before this baby was born, I carefully read about the very best way to make sure that my baby had a thriving, healthy prenatal experience. I faithfully went to the doctor and took my vitamins, ate well, and even stopped all intake of junk food and caffeine, including chocolate, which was quite the sacrifice for me! To stimulate neurological processes, we played classical music, especially Mozart and Bach, to our unborn baby. My husband and I would talk to my tummy so our child would recognize our voices, and we’d sing “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know” and other truth-filled children’s hymns, so that our child would know God loved him and so did we. We would also pray over my tummy, asking God to bless our child and use this child to serve Him. I was very intentional about everything I did.

Now I must make a confession. As my body started really changing, I couldn't sleep very well in those last few months, and finally the big day arrived--the birth of our son. “Wow!” I thought, “Now I can get my body back together, now I can start getting some sleep again, and we're going to be a wonderful threesome. I can hardly wait to get that baby on our schedule!” Not so! My sleeplessness grew worse with crying in the night, diapers, feeding, and a schedule--no way! On top of that, I had to finish up the school year after maternity leave, and I planned to have this child on a schedule in six weeks. Simple, right? As determined and schedule-oriented as I am, this can happen. Really? No, it did not happen. In fact, this newest member of our family put us on his schedule. I must admit that there were times that I wished things could have gone back to the way they were before he was born. In fact, I believed that adding in this first baby was the hardest thing that I had ever experienced. Yikes, you might say, did you really have those thoughts? Yes, I did. Now what could I do? God had given us this precious living soul for a lifetime, and my thinking was all wrong. It was selfish, faithless, and downright sin. So, I asked the Lord to help me, and He showed me to pray for that child and ask Him to give me love for that baby, just the same kind of love God has for me. So, I started to pray, and God did give me great love for that little boy. We did not get a full eight-hour night’s sleep for eighteen months, but what great joy we received, watching his cute antics, and seeing him progress through all the stages of babyhood. Yes, when we traveled, we had to take three times more paraphernalia than we had to take before, but this was God's gift to us, and he became precious. Then when my daughter came along, the Lord had so worked in my heart that the adjustment for her was much more simple. Isn't that a wonderful thing that the Lord works into you with the birth of a child? It's not all about you and your schedule and how you live life. Because I had to cry out to God for love for my child and how to train this little baby up in the ways of the Lord, I became much more dependent on God and more careful to read His word and obey it consistently, because this little guy would live forever and he was watching.

You may be a mother, a grandmother, a favorite aunt, an older sister, a special family friend, or even a children’s worker used by God as a facilitator, helping to build a portal for God to work eternity into that child's heart. There are so many voices out there reinforcing the “here and now” mentality, that we must consciously be intentional to voice the eternal. As the eternal becomes more important to you, your desire for your child to embrace the eternal will become stronger. So, how do you implant eternity into your child's heart? Pray and ask God what He would have you to do. For me, exposure and repetition have been critical. Children love repetition, so sing those scriptural children’s songs, pray out loud over your child, and quote Bible verses that tell your child God loves him, like Psalm 23. That way you can give your child familiarity with the truth of scripture from a very early age. Contact with the truth of scripture equals awareness of eternity. Even as soon as your child speaks in sentences, you can teach your child to pray and even to memorize short verses and psalms! So you see how you can start opening the eternity portal when your child is in the womb, and continue to widen it throughout childhood, and, with modification, beyond. Any of these interactions can happen when you’re in the car together, at wake-up time, at bedtime, at mealtimes, and at many other times when your hands are busy and your mind is not. And you will accomplish at least two things for your child by building this platform for eternal work to permeate your child’s heart: 1) your child will know that eternal things are very important to you, and 2) your child will know that God and eternity should be very important to him. In addition, while you are building a relationship of love with your child, you will also be obeying God's words found in Deuteronomy 6:5-7, “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” Let's be proactive and intentional about our faith in the lives of the precious children that God has given us to touch and see what God will do for the next generation.