the faith of my boy

My son is a spiritual giant at six years old. He keeps me on the straight and narrow. He has started asking deep and thoughtful questions and has a simple solution to his problems: prayer.

The other week his friend had given him a folder and it became one of those favored items – you know the ones. He draws a lot and he was putting his drawings in the folder. When the folder disappeared he enlisted me on his search high and low. We looked for about 30 minutes and then I got a phone call. I told him I was going to take a break from searching while I talked to my sister. Not five minutes later he showed up with the folder in hand and said, “I found it because I prayed. Then my legs just led me there!” I asked him to tell me more and he said that after he had said his prayer, he decided to follow his legs. He started walking and then “they wanted to turn this way, then they wanted to walk over here…” Sure enough, his “legs led him” straight to where the folder was sitting in a pile of papers on the shelf.

The simplicity of this hits me over and over again. While at first I doubted that his legs would drive him as an answer to prayer, as I contemplated it, I started to see his innocence and simple unquestioning faith. He hasn’t started doubting himself yet. He hasn’t started questioning if this is indeed an answer to prayer or his own mind. He understands that God answers spirit to spirit and he is willing to listen in ways that don’t make sense to those of us who have made a lot of messes by questioning anything and everything.

Last night he said to me, “I know what the ‘still small voice’ sounds like.” I said, “Oh, you do? What does it sound like?” He told me that he’d heard it, that it’s not as small as he thought it would be and it will say things like, “don’t do that.” He said that he will look around or ask me if I said something to him, but come to find out that there isn’t anyone around him, and he knows it is the Holy Ghost.

Question this if you may, but I have learned through talking to many people that the Holy Spirit does indeed speak to each person who will listen, and He speaks to them in a way that they will understand it individually. There are as many ways to get answers to prayer as there are personalities. So maybe my boy needs a loud voice, not so still and small. Maybe he needs a little pull physically to guide him to his answers. I think it’s beautiful and simple. I hope that someday my legs will lead me where I need to go because I asked God to guide me. I pray that someday I can become like my innocent boy and stop questioning if that was my mind or a still small voice of guidance.