The Little Moments That Leave a Big Faith (Part One)

Faith in the Everyday

There are some things our grandchildren may never remember. They may not remember what we served for supper on an ordinary Tuesday evening. They probably won’t remember whether the laundry was folded, the kitchen floor was swept, or whether Grandma had everything just so.

But they may remember hearing their name whispered to Jesus. They may remember sitting beside us in church. They may remember the Bible resting open on the kitchen table, hearing us thank God before a meal, or watching us bow our heads and pray when life didn’t go the way we had hoped.

And somewhere along the way, those little moments can become part of a much bigger faith story.

As grandparents, we can sometimes wonder whether we are doing enough to help our grandchildren know and love the Lord. We may think we need the perfect family devotional, just the right words, or a deep theological answer for every question they ask. But I have come to believe that some of the most powerful lessons about faith happen in the ordinary moments of everyday life.

God has given grandparents a beautiful place in our families’ spiritual lives.

Psalm 78:4 reminds us: “We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonders that He has done.”

What a calling.

We get to tell them. Not only about who God was to generations before us, but about who He is to us right now.

We can tell our grandchildren about the prayers He answered and the ones that required us to wait. We can tell them about the doors He opened and the doors we now understand He lovingly kept closed. We can tell them about times when we couldn’t see what God was doing, but trusted Him anyway.

Our grandchildren need to know that faith is more than something Grandma talks about on Sunday morning.

It is something she lives on Monday. And Tuesday. And every ordinary day in between.

They Are Watching More Than We Realize

Children have a way of noticing things. And asking things. Sometimes over and over and over again.

I’m raising my ten-year-old grandson, and recently he earned a spot on a travel soccer team. To say he was excited would be putting it mildly! We ordered his new uniforms and were told they could take four to six weeks to arrive.

Well, four to six weeks might as well have been four to six years to a ten-year-old waiting on a brand-new soccer uniform.

“Jamma, did my uniform come?”

“Do you think it’ll come today?”

“Did they send anything?”

“Can we check?”

Four times a day. Every day. Until that package finally showed up.

I had to laugh. That boy had been waiting on that package like it was Christmas morning. But watching his excitement reminded me of something.

He never doubted that uniform was coming. He knew it had been ordered. He knew it had been promised. The only part he didn’t know was when.

And goodness, don’t we know a little something about waiting?

We pray. We wait. Sometimes we ask again. And again.

We don’t always know when an answer will come or what it will look like when it does. But those waiting seasons give us an opportunity to show our grandchildren what trusting God looks like.

God is not a delivery service that sends us everything we ask for. His ways are higher than ours, and sometimes His answer looks very different from what we imagined. But we can trust His character even when His timing is not ours.

And our grandchildren are watching how we wait.

They notice how we respond when someone hurts our feelings. They notice whether we pray only when everything is going well or whether we reach for God when life gets hard. They hear how we talk about other people.

They see whether the Jesus we worship at church is the same Jesus we follow at home.

That may sound like a mighty big responsibility, and in many ways it is. But I don’t believe God is asking grandparents to demonstrate a perfect faith. He is asking us to demonstrate a real one.

Sometimes that means letting our grandchildren hear us say, “I don’t know what God is doing yet, sweetheart, but I know we can trust Him.”

Sometimes it means apologizing when we lose our patience.

Sometimes it means stopping right there in the middle of the kitchen and saying, “Let’s pray about it.”

Those moments teach something. They teach our grandchildren that prayer is not our last resort.

Prayer is where we begin.

Faith Can Grow Around a Kitchen Table

Deuteronomy 6 gives us a beautiful picture of passing God’s truth from one generation to another:

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:6–7).

I love the everydayness of those words.

When you sit. When you walk. When you lie down. When you rise.

In other words, God belongs in the everyday rhythm of our homes.

Faith can be nurtured while driving to soccer practice.

It can happen over pancakes on Saturday morning.

It can happen while planting flowers, walking along the shore, baking cookies, rocking a baby, or sitting on the porch as the evening settles in.

We don’t always need to turn those moments into sermons.

Sometimes all it takes is noticing God out loud.

“Look at that sunset. Isn’t God creative?”

“Let’s thank the Lord for answering that prayer.”

“I know you’re worried. How about we pray together?”

Little words. Little moments. Big seeds.

We may not see what is growing beneath the soil right away, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t at work.

And sometimes, those seeds planted in the smallest moments become a spiritual legacy that reaches much farther than we ever imagined.