We had been settling down for bed and he had asked to read one of my recent purchases for him: a new picture Bible. I had been really excited about this, until little things started disturbing me. The pictures of certain characters, the way it described God, and how it missed out parts of the story all made me realise we needed to rotate it out of circulation. So when he asked for it, I said: ‘Let’s read one of your other story Bibles. I’m not sure that one is very good.’
‘Whyyyyyy?’ he asked.
‘Well, sometimes it tells the stories in a silly way,’ I said.
He sat on his bed pondering as he watched me. ‘So do my other Bibles tell the stories perfectly?’
‘Um, no. They all don’t tell the whole story. No picture Bible does. They all… just… um… miss different bits. I winced. I could feel this conversation was not going well.
‘So the Bible is a lie?’ my son clarified. I froze.
I’ve thought lots about how important it is to ensure children know the whole story of the gospel. I’ve thought loads about the importance of children seeing the truth of scripture lived out in everyday life. But I had never really thought about this until this moment.
‘I’ll be right back’, I said and ran to get my big old, bazillion tiny words Bible. I sat next to him on his bed, and said, ‘Look. This is the whole Bible, the true Bible. Look at all the words in it!’
‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘The words are tiny! And very crumbly!’
‘They have to be that tiny and the pages have to be so thin because there is so much truth in it. This Bible never changes, it’s the truth. Let’s look at your Bible story books.’ We flipped through them and compared them to each other. ‘No picture book can have all the stories so they pick the bits they think are important.’
‘But I want the real truth! Can I have a real truth Bible?’
My brain began to want to answer, ‘But you can’t read big words yet and maybe it won’t make sense and will turn you off the Bible’ And then I stopped. My son wanted God’s truth. ‘Absolutely!’ I said. I jogged to the lounge to grab a copy of the Bible and wrote his name in it. I climbed back into his bed waving his new Bible.
We want our children to love the Bible and so in our attempt to make it accessible, we can accidentally rob it
I started with Genesis, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth…’
‘Ah!’ he squeaked. ‘I know this one!’ He grabbed one of the picture Bibles and flipped to the pictures. We read more than 12 chapters that night. When his story Bible didn’t have the pictures, he laid it down and just listened. I closed the door to his room I was a bit stunned.
As children’s leaders, we want our children to love the Bible, and in our attempt to make it accessible we can accidentally rob it of its depth. Do we actually trust that God’s word will accomplish what he desires in the lives of our children?
Once my child knew that there was full truth available, he hungered for it. For the first time, he valued scripture like I value it. Not for entertainment, but for truth, for a deeper understanding of God.
As much as we want our children to encounter God heart-to-heart and face-to-face, we must also enable our children to meet with him through the steadfast scriptures. It is a blessing from God that they can trust in. In a world that constantly changes, our children need to count on the consistent thing that will always point them to him. God promises that his words will accomplish his desire and achieve his purposes for our children. In the mix of all we do, we must not forget to give them access to his words and truths, not just to the plots of his stories.
