The truth is that from an earthly perspective, life is a free fall. We are quite literally being tossed into the air by all sorts of things we cannot control. Job, family, health, safety — they are all a crap shoot (at least from an earthly perspective). We walk in danger all the way (as the hymnwriter put it). Without the Lord as the focus of our eyes, hearts, and minds, we would be left to the terror of this free fall called life after the fall (literally). Without the safe and secure arms of our Heavenly Father acting in Christ Jesus His Son, we would quite literally be captive to everything that can go wrong — even and especially death.
The challenge of the faith is not to teach it to the small children but to learn from them how to trust without fear. The child tossed into the air by mom or dad is the perfect example of the power of faith to calm our fears. Children have not learned as well as we have the power of such fear and the manifold “what ifs” that seem so effective in making us prisoners to our fears. But their time will come. We will teach our children well — so well, indeed, that by the time they are teenagers they will trust no one — not us and not even God — without a second thought. We have become very adept at instilling our own fears into our children but we struggle to learn from them the power of faith and trust.
Those who refuse infant baptism generally do so in large measure because they find it impossible to accept that a child can believe (the small children of infancy and toddlerhood). On the other hand, I find it hard to accept that any adult believes!….
theology like a child 