Learning Faith from a Five-Year-Old

    They were baby shoes. Nike baby shoes. Little white leather athletic shoes with a sky blue "swoosh" on the sides.

    The cost? $47. I really couldn't afford the shoes, but I bought them anyway, making them even more precious.

    One day my kids and I decided to go out for a hike. My son was five. My daughter was one, and she rode in a backpack. I laced the prized Nike shoes tightly onto her wiggly, soft feet, and we set off on a beautiful autumn day, taking a hilly trail through a grove of old oak trees. Columns of dust spun slowly as they floated up in the sunlight.

    Finally we arrived at the trail's end. As we rested, I felt my daughter's little squirmy foot rub along my back. It was soft. Too soft. I looked down, and my heart gave a jolt. I saw a pink leg, a white sock. No shoe.

    I turned around, frantically scanning the ground around us and on up the trail. Nothing. I started quickly back up the trail as my mind spiraled off in endless whirls of worry. Then I stopped. Stood. Fretted.

    That's when five-year-old Ethan spoke. His clear earnest gaze smoothed away my frown. "Mommy, why don't you pray?"

    That was it. So simple.

    Ethan and I held hands. He prayed: "God, we lost Thea's shoe. We can't find it anywhere. We don't know what to do. Please help us."

    If my son's faith was a mustard seed, then mine was a dust mite. I hadn't thought to pray. And then, even when I heard Ethan's prayer, I didn't trust God to answer it. I was too busy worrying.

What is faith?

    Faith is the opposite of worry. Faith means to believe or to trust in a God who cares, a God who knows how precious a little shoe can be. Faith is not a feeling, but an action—an act of the will. And it all starts with prayer. Prayer is talking to God, telling Him your problems, and trusting that He knows best.

    In Luke 18:16-17, Jesus talked about the faith of small children, who rushed to touch and talk to Him: ". . . For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it" (NIV).

    Why is it that, when a crisis hits, we try everything else we can think of before we talk to God? Maybe it's because we have too much education and too many resources. Five year-old Ethan didn't. But he did know how to send out a 911 call to God, his first resource.

How to Get Faith

    Where does this childlike faith come from? First, ask God. He gives a measure of faith to all believers (Romans 12:3), and He will increase it as He works in each life. (Luke 17:5)

    Next, follow Ethan's example, and make a 911 prayer to God your first act, not your last resort. If God cares enough to have numbered every hair on my head (Luke 12:6-7), I know He cares about a lost baby shoe.

    Last, keep a journal noting the dates of prayers and their answers. Review it periodically, and your faith will grow as you see God answer your petitions. He never changes, and He is still a God of miracles.

A Small Miracle

    And the shoe? As soon as Ethan said "amen," I saw something in the dark of the woods. Fifty yards away, a column of light broke through the trees. The ray gleamed, and like a miracle of alchemy, transfigured the slowly rising dust into particles of floating gold. It was so bright that the surrounding forest grew even darker.

    But it was what the dazzling ray of sunlight picked out that caught my eye. The lost shoe. It lay in the red dust, gleaming, the center of a golden circle.

    I was speechless, at once amazed at the miracle and ashamed of my doubts. I ran towards the precious shoe, tears surging, my heart full. The five-year-old wasn't fazed. He, of what now seemed to me to be towering and even profound faith, thought it was no big deal. As if he knew God would answer his prayer.

    But I needed to understand, that day, the meanness and smallness of my faith. I needed to see true faith in action. I needed a miracle.

    It is a paradox; how can the smallest among us, the youngest, the most immature, the least wise, the most inexperienced and almost wholly uneducated, possess true faith?

    But I saw it that afternoon. Ethan showed me. I learned how to get faith. I asked. And He answered, with a shoe.

by Susanna Flory