Young children with their natural guilelessness
can teach us
much about reverence. They are genuine and sincere, without ulterior motives. With them, there is no danger of practicing their piety in front of other people. And children sing – unselfconsciously
and happily, thus expressing their connectedness to God more
beautifully than the most eloquent prayer. Children are generously
forgiving, and they abandon themselves completely in their enjoyment of life. In short, children are reverent.
But this reverence, this childlike spirit, must be protected. We
should never force children to say prayers (let alone memorize long
ones), for then their innate longing to speak to God may be
harmed. More important than regular prayers is preserving in our
children their natural longing for what is of God. And in doing this,
we also preserve our own reverence. I have been told by several
articulate, highly educated people that when it comes to prayer,
they use the simplest words and relate to God just as a child would.
My grandfather, Eberhard Arnold, was a theologian. I never knew
him, but I have been told that he was not an overtly religious person. Things of the spirit were simply natural to him, and after a few
minutes in his presence you knew that all that mattered in his life
was Christ. Even so, he did not teach his children much from the
Bible; he must have had too much of it himself as a child. Papa told
me that when he was sixteen years old, he discovered the Lord’s
Prayer on his own and was amazed that such a prayer existed; his
father had never mentioned it to him. My grandfather led his children to faith through his actions.
My wife and I have nineteen grandchildren, and we notice again
and again how close they are to God. They will speak trustingly of
their guardian angels, and they love to sing the lullaby from
Humperdinck’s
Hansel and Gretel:
When at night I go to sleep
Fourteen angels watch do keep:
Two my head are guarding,
Two my feet are guiding,
Two are on my right hand,
Two are on my left hand,
Two who warmly cover,
Two who o’er me hover,
Two to whom ’tis given
To guide my steps to heaven.
True children – that is, those who are still childlike – have no doubt
that this is true. And in these times we grown-ups, too, are in need
of protection, day and night, by the unseen powers from heaven.
Recently a child said to me, “I’m frightened when I hear about
wars and bombs, and people getting killed. It gives me nightmares!” How far should we go in exposing our children to the need
of the world? It is a difficult question. Certainly we cannot bring
them up in protective isolation, yet on the other hand, we do not
want to burden them unnecessarily with thoughts and images of
violence and hunger, disease and death. Perhaps the balance is in
making our children aware of these things but at the same time
helping them to remember that God’s angels are always watching
over them. What is happening in the world is certainly terrible and
awful, but we must believe that, ultimately, God will create a new
heaven and a new earth. This is promised us in the Book of
Revelation: “He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, death will
be no more; sadness and crying and pain will pass away.”
Jesus taught us reverence for children. He said, “Let the little
children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of
God belongs to them.” And, “Assuredly I say to you, whoever does
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter it.”
And then, “See that you do not look down on one of these little
ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face
of my father.”
If you are around children very much, you will soon see how
trusting they are, and how dependent on us. When you sit by a
child at bedtime, you can feel how necessary it is that the child find
an inner contact with God. You can tell him that high above the
stars there is someone who is good, someone who knows and loves
him. He may say, “I know who you mean; the angels are up there
above the stars.”
“Yes, but above the angels is someone still greater. It is God.”
Then the child may feel something of this great being, the
Creator who is above all things and yet is always close to us. We can
tell the child, “In your heart, you can feel this good and great God;
you can speak to him, and obey him.”
This is important, for obedience comes through listening. And
when we learn to listen to the inner voice of the living God, then
we can learn to obey him. In such a way we can help our children to
realize that the voice of their conscience is actually the voice of
God at work in them. There is such a voice in the depth of every
heart. Even the young child knows when he has done something
wrong, and this works in his heart and makes him restless and
unhappy until he is stirred to put it right. And so the child can be
led to an understanding of the power of good over evil and to a
living faith in God.
Rudi, a lifelong friend, was a seven-year-old orphan when my
grandparents took him into their family in the early 1920s. When
he arrived, he was frightened and cried bitterly at the prospect of
yet another home. He remembers:
My fears about a new orphanage were soon gone, for this was a
real home. Eberhard took me on his lap and told me that he would
be my father and Emmy my mother (it was like that until they died).
Still, I longed to have my real parents, and I wept often.
My new parents comforted me and told me about God.
From that time on, peace slowly came into my heart and I felt the
need to pray every evening. My prayer was not just for myself,
but also to thank God for all the good things we had, even
though we were extremely poor: for my bed, for my shoes, or for
the extra piece of bread we had that day.
In my previous book
Seeking Peace
I included an anecdote from
Magdalena, a woman I have known since childhood, about the
death of her little brother, and the death of her mother several
years later. She has since told me the following:
When I was fourteen years old, my mother became very sick.
Most of her life she had suffered from asthma, and so her heart
was weakened. We children were told that Mama needed a big
operation, and because of her heart condition she might not live
through it. This came as a terrible shock to us. Our mother, with
her joy and her tenderness, was really the heart of the family.
Like never before, I went down on my knees and pleaded to
God for our mother’s life. I promised to serve God for the rest of
my days and to give up all my wickedness if only God would preserve her life.
Mama lived through the surgery, and her life was spared,
even though she never regained her full strength. She lived a
few more years before she died during an asthma attack.
I truly believe that my prayer for Mama was answered. At
that time I found a relationship with God that has lasted until
now. Although I was still very young, I knew from then on that I
could always turn to him, but I also knew I had promised to serve
him and must do my part.
We should never underestimate the power of children’s prayers.
Adults tend to be divided, untruthful, and insincere; many of us
live double lives. Yet children are single-hearted. Because they are
close to God, their prayers, simple as they are, can turn hearts of
stone into hearts of flesh.
In my work as a pastor and counselor, I realize more and more the
importance of helping others to “let go,” and to see that, in the
end, all our human striving comes to nothing. Too often people exert themselves in trying to solve a problem their way, and realize
later that their preoccupation does nothing but worsen the situation. In such cases it is better to leave it in God’s hands and let him
take care of it.
There are times when one’s prayer life becomes a battlefield, and
prayer becomes a fight rather than a meditation. At such times
prayer is no quick and easy way out of a troubling situation, but a
harrowing process of working things through until the heart is
cleansed. Anyone who has had to face intense personal distress will
know just what I mean. Jeanne, a mother of four, relates what she
experienced while expecting her second child:
It was shortly before Oliver was born, and already for a long time
I had known that not everything was as it should be. But even
on the worst days, I never thought we would lose our baby.
When it became clear that the little life I was carrying had only a
slim chance of making it, it was like my worst nightmare come
true.
I knelt down, numb, and prayed, “Thy will be done.” But
then it hit me: “You hypocrite! You don’t mean a word of it!”
And I realized I didn’t. I did not want God’s will at all. I wanted
my will. I wanted my baby. And if God meant to take him, then I
wasn’t going to have any part of it. Every fiber in my body rebelled against surrendering my child into his hands.
That was the end of my prayers for that night, but it was
only the beginning of the struggle. I knew I had to get to the
point where I could pray honestly, “Thy will be done,” and truly
mean it. Otherwise I would have no peace.
For many days all I could do was ask for “the will to want thy
will.” Sometimes it was very hard to pray. Medically, so many
things were going wrong that my stomach was tied in knots and
my heart filled with anxiety. God knows – perhaps those were
days when my struggling and heartache and emptiness became
prayer. In any case it was obvious that not even the most skilled
doctors could change a thing. I didn’t really have a choice. I had
to let go of everything – all my longings as a mother for my child.
It had to be all or nothing. Either I trusted God, or I didn’t.
Wasn’t it far better to let go, and let God take over, than continue in this state of panic?
Bit by bit, my longing was answered. Gradually I felt peace,
even joy, in letting go: “Here, God, my child is all yours.” I had
stopped fighting, and it was a tremendous relief. It still hurt, but
the tension was gone; my prayers were like sobs in mother’s
arms.
Perhaps the greatest gift was Oliver’s birth itself. I had had
tremendous fear of it: how could I ever cope with having my
baby die in my arms? But when the baby came, all my anxiety was
lifted. It was simply gone. Oliver’s birth, his short life span of two
hours, and his dying were all experiences of the deepest peace.
There is still the pain of having lost this child almost before I
was able to take him in. I still don’t know “why,” and sometimes
I am still tempted by “what ifs.” But my struggle to honestly submit to God’s will, and the peace he then gave me, reassure me to
this day.
There is a blessing
and tremendous peace that comes, often unexpectedly, when we simply let go, and Hans, a friend, says life has
taught him this lesson several times.
When I was about twenty-four I began to wake up each morning with a bloody tongue, for no obvious reason. A perceptive
family doctor arranged for a friend to watch me while I slept, and
he witnessed seizures. I was working in construction, supervising
the building of a large apartment house. Suddenly, I had to refocus my whole life. I had been strong and capable, but now I
faced multiple restrictions: no driving, no using dangerous machinery, no climbing on roofs or ladders. At first I rebelled
against the unfairness of it, but later I came to terms with my limitations and made the best of them. Eventually, anti-convulsant
medications even allowed me to drive again.
A few years later I began to work overtime on a regular basis, and being very fatigued, began to have seizures again. Once
I was driving a large forklift loaded with cement blocks, and I lost
consciousness for several seconds –long enough to drive into a
wall and nearly injure another worker. As a new evaluation and
new medications were ordered, I was driven to prayer as never
before.
During those years I felt drawn to the woman who is now my
wife. For a variety of reasons our love was frustrated for more
than three years, and I had to let go of it. Looking back, Heather
and I both feel that it was as a result of prayer, and of our decision to lay down our dreams and let God work, that we became
engaged and then married.
For ten years we were childless, despite our desire to have
children. We tried to adopt a child, but for three years nothing
worked out. We contacted one adoption agency after another,
attended seminars, and looked into private adoption. We wrote
hundreds of letters to priests, doctors, clinics, and hospitals. In
1989 we moved to Germany, where we continued our search for
a child. The Berlin Wall had just come down, and we heard of an
agency in London that was placing unwanted children from the
East Bloc with Western couples. Arrangements were made for us
to adopt a five-year-old Romanian girl, Marita, and we were almost on the train to fetch her when the agency told us to bring
a video camera and other expensive items. We began to smell
bribery, possibly even black-market connections. I refused to go.
At first Heather found it very difficult to give up the child when
we were so close to becoming parents, but in the end she let go
of it. A few months later we moved back to the United States.
Only days after we arrived back in New York, at a time when
we least expected it and were no longer actively pursuing any
leads, we received a phone call from a local hospital. An unwed
teen mother had given birth to a girl and did not want to keep
her. The doctor knew of our interest in adopting a child, and legal arrangements were begun immediately. We brought our
new daughter home when she was three days old and named
her Marita, after the Romanian child we never saw.
Recently I went through critical brain surgery for my epilepsy. Twice before the operation I was admitted for observation
so that the doctors could identify the origin of my seizures. Because I was off my medications, the seizures I experienced were
dreadful. One even threw my shoulder out of joint, so badly that
I am still doing physical therapy. Later, during my surgery,
Heather suffered long hours of worry, but I was calm. I was at
peace because I had finally let go, knowing that whatever happened, God would have his hand in it.