When Your Children Ask

When Your Children Ask

The moment I discovered I was going to be a mom, my life changed! I wanted nothing more than to protect the unborn baby that I now carried. I would eat right, take my vitamins even though they made me sick, rest when I felt the need to, go to monthly appointments because life was about taking care of this baby that would soon be. At my son’s birth I felt love like I had never felt before. The helplessness of a newborn causes the heart of new parents to swell in a way that it causes them to spend several hundred dollars to purchase everything from a box of diapers to throwing money into a future college fund!

As our children become toddlers, Pre-Schoolers, and on into the teens and adulthood years, a mother never stops wanting to protect, teach, pray for, guide, and counsel her children. As we have entered into a place we have never journeyed before because of the pandemic called Covid-19, or the Coronavirus, I have wanted to reassure my young adult sons that God is with us and is going to take care of everything! A mother is always hopeful that she is giving the right advice, counsel, and reassurance. I believe the Lord understands our uncertainty in all of this.

Because Journeys and Devotions is a blog written by women and about women, I would like to come to the story of the crossing of the Jordan found in Joshua 4:8-24 from a mother’s point of view. If I had my two small boys by the hand and was looking at a sea of water that could not be crossed without being swept away and the man of God said we are going to cross! My heart would be pounding and there would be a feeling of panic because I would not be sure I could keep hold of my children in the midst of heavy wind, tons of water, and to the physical eye, no way through this river. But God! But God opened the water for Joshua just like he did for Moses. I can just see Miriam trusting the words of Moses as he stretched out his rod and said “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord!” Miriam knew her brother to be a man of God who was in tune with the voice of the Lord. Can you just see her grabbing her children and being the first to take them by the hand and saying come, children! And because of Miriam’s trust in God and the man of God, other moms took heart. A holy boldness came upon them and they began to lead their children across the Red Sea!

Miriam is gone, Moses is gone, most of those who left Egypt have died off except Joshua and Caleb. Here they are at the Jordan River. Joshua may have been thinking I remember you doing this for Moses, but I am not Moses. Mothers standing at the bank of the River. Maybe Miriam is still alive but much older and frail, but her grand-children and great -grandchildren are standing at the bank of the river and a mom is worried about if God is really going to come through for her and her children. I can see Miriam making her way to the edge of the Sea and standing with her shoulders as straight as her body will allow and a wave of faith comes over her along with a flood of memories of that day so long ago when the Red Sea opened to them. Miriam puts a foot into the water and assures the other moms that it is ok to take their children through a place they have never been!

Rocks were taken out of the middle of the Jordan and set up as a Memorial and God said to Joshua, this is a place you can bring your children. “When they Ask,” you can tell them the story of how God was with Moses, with Joshua, and now with you!

Stories will be told of how God brought us through this pandemic! Testimonies will be written down and read by our children and children’s children. As we are in the midst of an uncertain time, crossing territory we have never been through, gathering new information each day, gather some stones, write some stories, record testimonies of things God shows you along the way so “When Our Children Ask!” we will have details and we will show them how God was with us and hopefully we can tell them about a few lost people we picked up along the way!

-Written By: Patty Hollaway