On a cold day in early March in the hills of Nepal, I was baptised at three months old at my parents’ mission conference. The hotel staff were confused about why this particular group was asking for warm water, so they brought boiling water unceremoniously in the same banged-up pot it had been heated in, assuming it was for drinking. After it cooled a bit, surrounded by family, godparents and missionary coworkers, I was marked as a child of God. There was nothing special in the water, but there was something extraordinary in the words and promises of my parents and godparents on that day.
In the years that followed, each of them has done a commendable job of showing me the grace and love of Jesus through their actions and words. There has never been a day when I consciously thought that God did not exist or Jesus was just a normal man because of the evidence that was before me, including in their lives and the other Christians I encountered in my childhood and youth.
habits that will help them weave reminders of God's love into their daily lives
Now, with my own children, I hope they will have a similar experience of always knowing God’s love. Thankfully, I can share this challenge with my husband Timothy, their godparents, and the wider church. The idea that it takes a village to raise a child also applies to raising a Christian. We hope our daughters will see, through Christians relating to them, to others in the community, and to the wider world, the difference Jesus makes in the lives of his followers.
By prioritising church on Sundays, spending quality time with our fellow Christians, and actively finding ways for our family to serve our city and the world, we hope our daughters’ hearts are able to understand what the life of a Christian looks like, and it is something that they will continue to choose for themselves.
In our daily rhythms as a household, we also try to teach them the habits that will help them weave reminders of God’s love into their daily lives. While they are small, that currently looks like reading age-appropriate Bible stories, short, simple prayers, and introducing them to hymns and other Christian songs that we now hear them sing to themselves as they play. We also try to model the behaviours we want them to emulate, particularly learning to apologise and ask for forgiveness when we make mistakes with them, so they understand God’s forgiveness toward us.
Only time will tell whether our prayers and hopes for them to hold onto faith in God will be fulfilled, but we take heart in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
