Have you ever tried to learn a new language? Experts say that it’s easier to learn as a child, something about our brains being more pliable or storing the information better. We retain the sounds and phrases with more ease than we do as adults. We have faith, as children, that the letters we learn will come together to form sounds, the sounds will eventually form a word, a word will form a phrase, a few phrases will form a sentence, a few sentences a paragraph, a few paragraphs a page, and many pages later, a book. A slow progression of learning and trusting that everything will come together, even if we aren’t sure how on earth those tiny sounds will ever be enough to become a novel. As adults, we may try to make the unfamiliar sounds and give up too early because we said it wrong, or we can’t see the end goal of that novel. So we quit. We quit trying. We lose faith. Because it’s hard. Because we don’t trust. Because life was easier as a child, and we aren’t children anymore.
This week I had the pleasure of accompanying one of our hosts to a reading group consisting of 5 girls around 9-12 years old. They didn’t get the same opportunities of going to school to learn, and so now, when they should be in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade, they are just learning to read and write in their native language of Portuguese. We sat with them for 2 hours playing a flashcard memory game, a vocabulary matching game, and then an exercise in which we heard the letters of a word in Portuguese and had to write them out on paper and then pronounce the word aloud in front of all 8 people present. I was nervous by all accounts, but these girls weren’t. They had faith. Faith that the letters they heard would in fact form a word, and that word would sound exactly as they had been told it would. They were ecstatic when each of them wrote the letters correctly and pronounced the word with pride. They helped each other trace the swoop of a “g” when one couldn’t seem to get it right. They sounded out the words together, leaning on each others faith that the word would in fact be a word. They were so full of life and joy. To be surrounded by their friends learning the same thing. To be in a group led by one brave British woman who cared about their future. To, finally, be able to read and write in a language they had been speaking their entire lives. To just be.
What would our lives look like if we could have faith like that? Not just in learning a new language, but in our walk with God as well. Faith like a child. Knowing and trusting that the God is teaching you your letters first, and eventually you would know the sounds, the words, the phrases, the sentences, paragraphs, pages, and maybe, just maybe, one day you would write that book with Him. But do we trust Him enough? Do we have the faith to just follow and not know when one step will transition to another? And if we can have the faith, can we have the joy? The joy that is uninhibited. Untainted. Pure joy for the moment we are in. Not paying attention to the things we mess up or the ways we fail. Just being joyful because we got to be apart of life.
I don’t know about you, but I want that faith and that joy. I want to be like a child. Trusting. Joyful. No matter the frustrations. I want to smile like those 5 girls. So carefree and happy because of the joy He gives us.
My challenge to you, my friends, is to join these girls and myself. Be children with us. Have faith and trust that every step He asks you to take blindly He has already walked Himself. And because of that truth, take every step with joy because you get to be apart of His Kingdom. Be joyful because you get to live, because He lived first. This is the language we are all learning, sound it out one prayer at a time.
Trust Him. Find the Joy. Let Him teach you His language for your life.
