A Little Child Shall Lead Them: What Moms Can Learn from Their Children’s Curiosity about Creation

As the shadows gathered, the light finally slipped away. It was a warm summer night, and I was sitting on my back patio that overlooks field and forest. Overhead, the first stars began to twinkle. And just as the lights above me began to emerge, smaller ones started appearing in the yard as mating fireflies began their seasonal dance. Suddenly, the stillness was pierced by squeals of delight.

“Look, over there! There’s one! Catch it! Catch it!”

“I got one! Look, Mom—I got one!”

“Quick, get a jar. We can catch them and take them inside.”

It had been years since I’d chased fireflies, but watching my children dance around the yard chasing these luminescent insects transported me back to my own childhood—back to when life felt rich with wonder and mystery. And suddenly, something like a weight began to fall from my shoulders and an openness began to crack in my soul. I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: Wonder. Awe. Curiosity.

Children’s effortless enchantment with the natural world reminds me of a text in Isaiah 11. To describe the coming reign of Christ, the prophet envisions a creation at rest—a creation where sin and the curse are banished so that God’s glory can be seen and enjoyed. “The wolf will dwell with the lamb,” he writes, “and the leopard will lie down with the goat. The calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf will be together, and a child will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

By referencing a child, the text is likely alluding to Jesus himself, who came into creation as a child. But there’s something else here—a deeper truth about what children can teach us through their childlike openness, wonder, and awe.

Children played an important role in Jesus’s earthly ministry. Matthew 18 records that he once called a small child to stand in front of the disciples to teach them about the kingdom of heaven: “‘Truly I tell you,’ he said, ‘unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’” (18:3). And then, just one chapter later, Jesus invites the children to come to him, saying, “Leave the little children alone, and don’t try to keep them from coming to me, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).

But perhaps the most poignant moment comes when Jesus enters the temple during Holy Week, and the children erupt in shouts of praise and wonder, saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matthew 21:15). The chief priests and teachers of the law are taken aback and chide them. In response, Jesus reminds them that God welcomes and commands children’s praise. “Have you never read,” he replies, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?” (21:16, NIV).

Yes, we enter the kingdom of God through childlike, humble dependence on God, but we also enter it through awe. We enter it as children who can’t help but exclaim their joy at the wonder of God’s work.

And yet, if you’re anything like me, you know that life has a way of stripping us of this kind of open anticipation and expectation. As we encounter suffering and hardship, it slowly closes us off. We find our hearts growing cold, cautious, and calculating. We no longer sing our praise. We no longer dance among the fireflies.

Instead, we build protective walls around ourselves. Our imaginations stunt. We don’t play anymore. Everything is serious work, and the idea of a long, meandering walk through a forest or collecting daisies for a fairy crown seems foolish and wasteful.

But the very walls we construct to keep ourselves safe are the same walls that can end up trapping us, cutting us off from the wonder and possibility that is essential to understanding God’s work. In this way, children are uniquely gifted to lead us out of our cynicism and apathy, to help us remember what it feels like to encounter God’s world and work for the first time.

Because as we open ourselves to see God’s glory in the natural world around us, we learn and relearn how to encounter it within our own hearts. As we recognize God’s creativity there, we can believe that this same creativity is working to bring all things together for our good.[1] As we stand in awe of the power that made the waterfalls, we understand that this same power is working in us to will and do his good pleasure.[2] And when we see a shoot come up from the ground in new life, we remember that we too will one day be raised to newness of life.[3]

So the next time your little one gasps in wonder, the next time their wandering slows you down and forward progress seems impossible, the next time they want to dance with the fireflies—get out of your chair and dance with them. Let their childlike wonder and imagination inspire your own until you surrender to the moment and discover anew all that is in the world God made. 

[1] Romans 8:28

[2] Philippians 2:13

[3] Romans 6:4-5