Tuesday Testimonies: Why Childlike Faith is Crucial for Christians

We were sitting around a wooden table, celebrating my friend Anna Davidson’s birthday, when her mom, Dawn, came back downstairs with a present – something she had been waiting over 21 years to give her daughter. 

Anna sat across the table from me, next to her dad, Phillip, who, before early August, she had not seen since leaving her home in Minsk, Belarus in January. 

Her parents are missionaries, and after a summer of hopping from house to house, including mine, she finally got to be with her family again. Home. Or as close as she could get without a nine-hour plane ride.

I watched as Anna untied the bow and ripped off the wrapping paper to reveal a journal that Dawn had written notes in, starting four months before Anna was born.

“Anna Grace- The ultrasound technician tells us you are a girl,” Dawn wrote in the first entry. “We decided to go ahead and call you by name and pray for you by name- although God knows you much better than we do already.”

Flip a few pages and almost six years later, there’s another entry that signifies a different kind of beginning.

“Big news,” Dawn wrote. “You asked Jesus to fill your heart!”

On August 2, 2005, Anna was sitting on the floor next to her older brother, Seth, watching cartoons on an old box TV. The house was the third place they had lived in the two years since moving to Belarus.

An episode of Tom and Jerry came on the screen, beginning with the classic game of cat and mouse. Tom chased Jerry with a devilish look in his eyes but got crushed against a wall by a piano and “died.” Anna watched as Tom rode a golden escalator to the gates of heaven, where he was denied a trip on the “Heavenly Express” because of his sins against Jerry. The cat at the ticket counter told Tom that he must get Jerry to sign a statement of forgiveness within the hour or else he would go to hell.

“That’s not right,” Anna remembered saying, turning to her brother.

Their attention was no longer on the television as Tom tried to bribe Jerry with cheese to sign the certificate. Seth, who was 10 at the time, began explaining to Anna how she does not have to ask for Jerry’s forgiveness, but Jesus’ to get to heaven.

“Then – like a light bulb when off – you said ‘Oh, I had to say my prayer.’ Then you said a sweet prayer – short – asking Jesus to fill your heart and forgive you,”          
Dawn wrote.

On that day, my friend Anna began her walk with Jesus. For Tom, the vision of heaven and hell ended up being a dream, but for Anna, it became a reality. She would hit bumps in the road later in life, including a scoliosis diagnosis, but that day she awoke to the reality of heaven.

Anna is sometimes afraid to share this part of her story because she thinks it is silly. In some ways, it is — a cartoon made for kids to laugh at a silly chase of cat and mouse was probably not made to lead a missionary kid to Christ in a foreign country. 

But it did. That is what we have to learn from young Anna Davidson.

We do not often see the world like Anna did when she was 5 years old. Sometimes we recognize the work of God in a beautiful sunset or when we look over a mountainous landscape. Maybe we see his love in the tenderness of an old couple or the generosity of a stranger.

But I, at least, forget to see how God works in the little things. The silly things.

Anna’s story is a call to recognize how God can and does reveal himself to children at a young age. It is a testimony of his pursuit of people in all stages of life and the reality of that pursuit. It shows that God yearns for the young ones to come to him. 

But it is also a reminder that we need to open our eyes to how God can show Himself to us when we least expect it. Whether we are seasoned Christians or just beginning our walk, we must put on this lens to see God not as simply a miracle worker, but a Father who is involved in the little moments, who has a sense of humor and who desires for us to have childlike faith. 

Just as Anna’s eyes were opened to the love her mother had for her before she was even born, our Father desires for us to see the love He has placed over us, and how the story He is writing for us is one worth telling.

Jacqueline Hale is the Feature Editor. Follow her on Twitter at @HaleJacquelineR.