Our kids are 18 and 16. It’s such a blessing to have grown-up conversations about faith with them, whether those are discussions about life or theology. Recently we have been wrestling with issues of sexuality, God’s sovereignty, and leadership. Parenting our older kids is challenging, but a lot of fun.

Some years ago, when we opened our home to foster kids, one of the unexpected blessings of welcoming these children into our home was the gift of opening up children’s Bibles and singing lullabies to these beautiful children. There is a profound anchoring in returning to the simple truths of the faith every day.

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

I still hug my kids. I still pray with them. I still speak simple truths to them. But there is something powerful about the repetitive care of an infant: something liturgical.

Every night with our foster daughter Lilly closed with the same liturgy. I bathed her: cupping water over her head, gently scrubbing her skin with soap. I lifted her little body out of the bath and engulfed her in a towel. I dried her off and massaged her with moisturizer. I brushed her teeth, put on her footie pajamas, and carried her to her room.

We would perch on the edge of the bed, open up a book, and read the same stories I’ve read dozens (hundreds, perhaps) of times. She fingered the pages, I held her close. We read a story from the Bible. I try to protect the pages from being ripped by her wandering fingers. I picked her up, rocked her, and looked into her eyes as we sang lullabies together. She looked back intently. Simple truths repeatedly rhythmically every night. They are truths for her. Truths for me.

In this simple liturgy, my heart is reshaped. My attention narrowed from my adult world of anxieties and fears to Lilly’s deep brown eyes. How much can a fifteen-month-old understand? So we poured love in the form of touch and in the form of truth into the heart of this precious, broken vessel. And that touch and truth returned to me: another precious, broken vessel.

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

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[i] John 3:12

[ii] John 6:36

[iii] Mark 16:14

[iv] Luke 16:67

[v] Matthew 13:58

[vi] Mark 6:6

[vii] Mark 16:16

[viii] Quoted in Preaching with Power, edited by Michael Duduit, 213.

[ix] Jude 1:22

Photo by Kseniia Ilinykh on Unsplash