“Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” –Romans 10:17

I started reading The Story Bible from Concordia Publishing House to my son in the evenings at bedtime.  It’s a wonderful collection of Bible narratives geared toward children.  There are life-like pictures, rather than the cartoonish images in many Bibles.  They help my son to understand that what happened in the Bible is true, instead of a story that someone made up to get a message across like the other books on his shelf.

He’s starting to ask for Bible readings every night.  Just another example of the Word building faith!  We know that the Holy Spirit works faith in us when we hear God’s Word.  It is God’s Word that drives us to Him who is The Word, Jesus Christ.

My son is becoming to me a model for this belief.  We read the narratives and he asks questions sometimes about what happened.  He likes to hear about Samson (he’s into superheroes right now, so I think there’s a connection).  But he always listens, and then tells me why reading the Bible is important.  “So we can know about Jesus and go to heaven.”  What a proclamation of the Gospel!  Mark 10:15, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

He believes the Bible because, to him, it’s true.  Not because I tell him so, although we certainly have taught him about Jesus.  He believes the Bible is true because his faith tells him so.  I find that when I don’t think so hard about God and Faith and eternity and Sacraments and Confessions and Commentaries and Catechisms, and instead listen like a child, the sweet message of the Gospel, of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, gives me more peace than I could ever seek in books or the so-called powers of my mind.  Sometimes, just sitting down with my son to read a story about Jesus is all I truly need.