When a Child Trusts Her Mother
Hospital Covenant Theology
My two-year-old daughter is in the hospital for a bone marrow transplant. Every day brings medicines, procedures, and unfamiliar faces. She does not know what aplastic anemia is. She cannot understand why she has been admitted so long and why she will stay another four to five weeks. She has come to fear that every open of her door will bring more pricks and hurts. She just doesn’t know what is going on.
But she knows her mother.
She knows her voice, her presence, her touch. And when her mother says, “It’s okay, I am here,” she believes her.
Trusting God by Trusting Parents
We teach our children to trust the God who has graciously revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. But for a young child, that trust is often expressed by their trusting the parents God has placed over them.
A child cannot yet discern God’s guiding hand, but she can follow the parents He has given to her.
A child cannot yet understand providence, but she can understand the love in her mother’s arms.
This is not a substitute for saving faith. But it is the God-ordained beginning of it. God’s covenant embraces not only individuals but whole households: “I will be your God and the God of your offspring after you.” (Genesis 17:7)
The way a child experiences the reliability of her parents is meant to teach her what God’s reliability feels like.
Covenant Theology & Our Children
Reformed theology has always confessed that the children of believers are members of the covenant of grace. Not outsiders waiting to apply and qualify, but insiders to be nurtured and discipled.
Our children belong to God before they can express it. They are recipients of His promises before they can articulate them. They are given the sign of the covenant because they are embraced within it.
Before David could understand the name of God, he was already trusting Him through the arms that held him: “You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.” (Psalm 22:9)
God mediated His covenant faithfulness through the nurture of David’s mother. Her reliability was the instrument by which God first taught David reliance upon Himself.
In those hospital moments, when my daughter reaches out her hand for that of her mother, she isn’t expecting the hand to remove pain, but she expects the presence of the hand to bring comfort. That is covenant theology in miniature.
As a father, the comfort and trust that I have in my personal knowledge of the Covenant of Grace belongs also to my daughter. As a covenant child, her trust in her mother is a covenantal path God uses to pour out comfort, and to draw her to Himself.
Covenant theology gives deep meaning to ordinary parenting. It teaches that:
A mother’s tenderness is an echo of God’s compassion.
A father’s reliability is a window into God’s faithfulness.
A child’s trust in her parents is the seedbed where trust in God is cultivated.
The home is a covenant nursery where faith is formed long before it is verbalized.
Our children’s first theology is learned not in propositions but in relationships.
Held by the Father Who Never Fails
As I watch my daughter find comfort and courage in her mother’s presence, I am reminded of Psalm 91:4: “He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and buckler.”
My daughter’s trust in her mother points beyond itself. It may not yet be saving faith in the Lord Jesus, but it reminds us all that we are all children, who are held, loved, and sustained by a Father whose faithfulness insures every promise.
We do not know everything God is doing in this season. But we trust the One who knows. And when I see my little girl resting in her mother’s arms, I remember that faith begins with the simple, covenantal truth that God Himself holds us first.