As we forgive

My favourite part of the day is the ten minutes before my toddler goes to sleep. The ten minutes after she goes to sleep are also pretty good, when I know my parenting responsibilities for the day are done. But I have been really enjoying our little devotional time as a family together, as our almost two-year-old drinks her milk and we read something together and talk to God.

Look, we know that at this age she’s not absorbing huge amounts of theology (though perhaps she is picking up more than we think). But being in the routine now of doing this together as a family is valuable at any age. It teaches her true things about God, but it also teaches her (and us) that this is something that is important to our family, that we want to do together regularly.

Faith Blocks for Little Hearts from Lift Their Eyes

Some nights are chaos, with her bouncing off the walls or melting down because we have said play time must stop. But some nights she sits nicely and cuddles while we do our devotion. We try to mix it up, so it stays interesting. We rotate reading through a few different kids’ Bibles. (Though at the moment the Bibles have to stay in the cupboard when we are not reading them as she loves books actively and not so gently). We have also used the excellent resources from Lift Their Eyes—we have the toddler building blocks of faith (pictured) up on her bedroom wall. At the moment we are doing one or two questions from the New City Catechism (kids’ version) each night. Sometimes we do longer prayers as well, sometimes we try to connect what we read about to what we can pray about. But whatever else is happening, even if it is said while changing a nappy, we say the Lord’s Prayer together before she goes to bed.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come, your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.
Amen.

In my previous article I explained our reasons for saying this memorised prayer together with our daughter every night. It has also been very good for my soul, and for my parenting, to say these words together daily. I particularly want to focus on this line: ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’.

Anyone in the thick of parenting knows there’s a lot of sin. There are incidental hurts and upsets, moments of selfishness and moments of disobedience—and that’s just my own behaviour! Throw in a strong-willed toddler learning about (and testing) boundaries, and neither of us make it through a day keeping our cool at every moment.

I sin against my daughter daily, in little and big ways. She sins against me as well. The reality of life is that those who are closest to us feel the impact of our sin more. So, to end each day with those people who I am closest to, and acknowledge that we have sinned, that we are forgiven, and we forgive each other, is a wonderful, precious thing.

Forgiveness comes only through Jesus, who day by day, hour by hour, wipes the slate clean and does not hold our wrongs and mistakes against us. He teaches us how to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

So, I don’t go to bed holding my daughter’s behaviour against her. I know the hitting, the glasses grabbing, the tantrums and meltdowns are two things at once: very normal developmental behaviour, and a sign that she needs Jesus to make her righteous before God. I can forgive and rest, preparing for another day of parenting.

I also don’t go to bed holding my own sin against myself. Yes, I was not as patient as I should have been when she wanted to read Spot for the tenth time. Yes, I was more distracted than I wanted to be during dinner. I failed in big and little ways, and Jesus has forgiven them all. My parenting is not ultimately my own effort, but a gift from God, just as all good things and good works are.

Tomorrow, we will get up and do it all again. As Anne Shirley says in Anne of Green Gables: ‘Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?’ (L.M. Montgomery). And when we make those mistakes, we can trust in a God who forgives and teaches us to forgive likewise.

This article originally appeared on Rebecca Sharley’s Substack, ‘Searching for Grace’.

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Rebecca Sharley is a trained primary school teacher with experience in kids’ and youth ministry. She runs training workshops in kids’ ministry and writes a newsletter called ‘Searching For Grace’ on Substack. She is the author of God’s Family Now: A New Look at Kids’ Ministry.

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