From the Mouths of Children

"From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength Because of Your adversaries, To make the enemy and the revengeful cease."  Psalm 8:2

One of the greatest things about living with toddlers is getting to hear what they have to say.  Sometimes I think they need muzzles because they say too much.  But sometimes their innocent brilliance shines forth when pearls of wisdom or genius statements of fact come from their mouths.  These are the days when I do a double take and ask, "How did you know that?"

I just finished reading a book entitled, Heaven is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back.  The book is written by a small-town preacher whose son had an emergency surgery at the age of three.  During this surgery, this little boy says he went to heaven and visited Jesus.  As a result, he describes "God's son" as wonderful and loving.  During the next 4-5 years of this little boy's life, he shares various stories and descriptions of heaven.  He never once contradicts himself.  Every description is consistent with the Bible.  And the little boy consistently reveals facts to his parents that he could have never known about them and their lives.

Now I'm typically a skeptic when I hear about out-of-body experiences.  This story, however, just seems real.  This child and his family have an amazing testimony and are using this experience to impact the world.  For some reason I'm not skeptical about this story, because reading this book changed me.  I feel like I suddenly have some peace about some questions that I've had about heaven.  Of course, we'll never know exactly what heaven is like until we get there, but hearing a 4 year old describe, in detail, the same description that John writes about in Revelation is pretty amazing.  And it makes me even more confident that John's writing was a literal description of heaven and not allegorical.

In addition, this book also gave me a new perspective on children.  I love children.  As a nurse, they were my favorite patients.  As a nurse in law, children are the clients that really tug at my heart the most and cause me to work extra hard.  As a mom, my children make me happier than any career or personal success I could have.  But this book made me realize that I can never love children enough.  They are special.  And Jesus loves the children very much.  Specifically, Jesus loves MY children very much.  As Psalm 8:2 says, God uses the mouths of children to "make the enemy and the revengeful cease." I believe that's what God is doing through the little boy in this book.

I don't want to spoil the "amazings" of this story, so I'm not going to tell you about all the jaw dropping statements that this little guy makes.  I heard him tell his story on one of the morning shows a few months back, but I didn't realize then how incredible the story really is. This book was so captivating that I read it in 2 days.  My husband read it in even less time.  If you have a spare afternoon this holiday season, please read it.