The great philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once described a familiar boyhood experience. He was being taught to swim by his father. Splashing wildly with both arms and kicking with one leg, he called to his father, “Look at me, look at me. I’m swimming!” But, says Kierkegaard, all the time he was holding onto the bottom of the swimming pool with his big toe. Many of us are like that in our faith. “I have faith!” we declare, but it is an untested faith. It is a tentative faith. One toe remains on the bottom! It is an enormous step for some of us to abandon our fears and trust God. Such faith may get harder for us the older we get.
In an issue of THE UPPER ROOM William Willimon tells about taking his four-year-old son to the local YMCA to take swimming lessons. He had some misgivings about this. He wondered how much a four-year-old could learn about swimming. To his surprise, the boy’s teacher said, “I wish we could have gotten him a little earlier. It’s so much easier to teach younger children to swim.”
“Younger children?” Willimon asked in disbelief.
“Oh, we like to get them before they can walk,” she replied. “Don’t forget, a baby is in water for nine months before it is born. Also, babies are still very trusting and will allow you to do more with them.” [1]
That’s true. Somewhere along the way we lose that child-like ability to trust–to rest our concerns on God.
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1. William Willimon, “Come On In, the Water’s Fine,” UPPER ROOM, 1980.