I had such a precious conversation with my daughter tonight. We’ve been talking through the principles of salvation for at least the past year – a memory verse here and there, a wordless book bracelet that her Grandma S sent to her, Bible stories, the observances of Christmas and Easter…

She’s understood (as much as a 3 year old possibly can) that we are all sinners and do bad things (yes, even Mom and Dad) and that we can’t know God on our own because of the sin in our hearts. So, Jesus died on the cross for us to wash away all our bad things so that we could know God and someday live in heaven with Him.

In the past couple of weeks she’s been saying more of her prayers before bedtime by herself. We talk for a while before we pray – we started with “what should we thank God for tonight?” Later, “is there anyone we should pray for?” was added on. In the past weeks I have started asking her, “is there anything naughty that you did today that we should tell God about?” This has spawned a lot of specific conversations about sin – that sin is being selfish, being sneaky and lying, having a “yucky attitude,” etc.

Tonight when we were talking about what she should tell God, she got very animated and sat up on her knees and said, “I want Jesus to wash away all of LB’s bad things! And I want Jesus to wash away all of Daddy’s bad things! And I want Jesus to wash away all of my bad things!” I asked her why and she said, “Because Jesus died on the cross!” “Why did He die on the cross for us?” “So that we could know God!”

So, we prayed and asked God to wash away all of her bad things so that she could know Him and live in heaven some day. After we prayed she snuggled down and said, “Now you can sing a song about how Jesus washes away all our bad things.” I sang John 3:16 to her (Steve Green has some great Scripture memory music that I highly recommend!); she asked what “perish” means (this has been a recurring discussion, as you can see here) so we again talked about the fact that if we die and do not know God, that we can’t live with Him; we can only have everlasting life if we believe in Jesus and that He washed away our sin.

It was not the most articulate prayer. We were missing a lot of “doctrinal verbiage,” and I’m not even sure that she fully understands what death means at 3 years old. But my precious little girl believes fully everything she can comprehend.

In my evangelical upbringing, we like to have a set-in-stone date we can point to and say, “On such-and-such a day at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a place, I prayed the sinner’s prayer and Jesus became my Lord and Savior.” So, do I write down today’s date? Do I write down a couple of months ago when she seemed to really grasp the idea of sin and that we can’t know God with sin in our hearts?

I was saved as a child, but I can’t tell you exactly when. I know there were a couple of occasions of “saying the sinner’s prayer” at church and at home, and as much as I can remember, I think I fully believed what I was saying but comprehended differing amounts at different times. This really created some internal angst for me around middle school – people were often challenging me and my peers, “was there a day that you trusted in Jesus as your Savior? Do you know for sure that you are saved?” Well, I sure thought I was saved – I sincerely loved the Lord! But, I didn’t remember… I just couldn’t quite put my mental finger on when that happened. When people asked, I told them what my parents always told me was “the” time I accepted Christ – I was four years old and at our Vacation Bible School. The catch is, I don’t remember it. Did that mean I wasn’t a Christian?

I remember talking about these things with my mom in the car one day. I still appreciate that rather than pointing me to a date written in the flyleaf of my Bible, she reminded me that I believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, I had confessed Him as Lord of my life, and talked through the fact that my life was bearing fruit – I really did know the Lord, and the evidence was unmistakable. I know that, Biblically speaking, there was a certain moment in time when I was brought from death to life, when I went from dead in my sins to alive in Christ… I just can’t tell you with certainty exactly when that was.

Tonight I have this mix of emotions for my little girl. I fully believe that she is saved – she understands as fully as a 3 year old can and fully believes that Jesus is the only way to know God and live in heaven with Him. This understanding will deepen and grow with age, as will her faith. She cannot fully grasp Jesus’ death on the cross at this point, because she has no frame of reference for death and suffering. She is a concrete thinker and much of what we discuss is very abstract – she probably still thinks that “perish” means “like a pear!”

As she grows older, I have no doubt that she will not remember our sweet conversation in her princess-canopy bed on March 25th, 2009. At some point God will allow her to understand on a deeper level what salvation really means, and she will probably want to pray again that Jesus would wash away her sin. Do I deny her that and tell her she already did that? Or do I allow the Holy Spirit to work and move, clarifying and firming up in her what had already happened in the past? Which date do I write down in her Bible?

Salvation and redemption are simple and yet profoundly mystifying. I do not believe we can ever fully grasp what Christ did for us, let alone why. I do not believe we can ever truly understand the complete holiness of God and the utter depravity of man. It is a mystery, and yet simple enough for a child to understand.

It is a reminder to me that we do not trust in a formulaic prayer or a date written in our Bible for salvation – we are entrusting our souls into the hands of our Great Shepherd. The one who loved us enough to seek and save us when we were lost, enough to call us His own when our faith was so small, simple, and inarticulate. His grace is amazing, indeed.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
1 Peter 2:24-25

It is so hard to throw away my daughter’s creations. Especially when she hands me something with a big smile on her face and says, “Mommy, I made this just for you!” Even so, I try to keep our refrigerator semi-clear of “art,” although right now you will find a heart from valentines day and some cow pictures…

One thing that has been working for me is making a kid art gallery in our mudroom. Years back I saw this idea in a magazine to make a “gallery” with clipboards hung on the wall, so I had filed it away in my mind for future use… It has been great! When we make a new project, or a picture AG is especially fond of, it either goes onto the clipboards or gets thrown away if it doesn’t make the cut. This is very cheap to do – the clipboards were less than $1 a piece!

This week we did some string painting and the pictures turned out really neat and abstract-looking. I found some old black frames we had and cut the pictures to fit. It turned out so cool that I believe I am going to add others to it in the future and start another gallery display on the other wall of the mudroom, all with framed and dated pictures that are real-deal “keepers.” :)

Have any other ideas for kids art that works for you?

We’ve already spent time in recent posts looking at Psalm chapter 1, and today I’d like to build on that some more. Remember Psalm 1:1-2?

Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2

We discussed that this person delights in knowing God and His Word and meditates on it day and night. While we’re not going to spend more time on that in this post, I invite you to download this simple study that I wrote for our women’s retreat this past February to work through on your own. You can click on the link at the top to download it onto your computer and be able to print a hard copy.

Journeys of Grace 03 – The Lord is My Delight

*Picture from wikipedia.org

This is clearly what I am tackling all week (um, month?), because there is no way to get it all done today! But, here’s what I’m up to. [After I wrote this I realized that our camera is in the car... in the parking lot of NP's office. Come back and visit to see the pics!]

Remember our room redo project? We’ve made great headway – NP built a beautiful headboard out of bifold doors he bought at the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, some crown molding, and trim. Isn’t it great? [Imaginary picture #1 here]

Our dust ruffle is finished (which of course did not go quite as smoothly as planned), and I have one curtain panel done. Today I want to get the other curtains sewn… we’re so close! After the curtains are up, I just need to press the duvet cover and “spruce things up.” NP is still working on our bedside tables… and maybe we should hang something on the walls! [Imaginary picture #2 here]

I’m also in the process of going through our cabinets and cupboards and doing spring cleaning/ organizing. Yesterday I got the bottom shelf done in my main food cupboard – now I need to do the other shelves. [Imaginary picture #3 here]

I’m also cleaning out things that I want to put in our garage sale this summer as I go – we need to simplify and I’m in the mood to purge! So, after the kitchen cabinets are in order I’ll be moving on to closets, and (dare I say it?) the attic. It ain’t pretty, folks!

It’s Tuesday – what are you tackling today?