And I love the picture that enters my mind when Jesus speaks. I need to keep asking that question. For me, the story of Jesus and the children helps emphasize that children are also ministers to us. John Westerhoff, who has written extensively on children and faith, has a helpful analogy to faith. He likens the development of faith to the rings on a tree.
Tree rings show the years of growth for that particular tree.
The rings may reflect bad years or years with very little water. They can reflect years when disease was present and years when all was well. Each ring adds to the tree, but the tree is always a tree, whether it has two rings or twenty. That's the same with faith. Nurturing Children's Faith One of our goals as parents is to provide homes for our children where their faith can be nurtured by us and where we are open to having our faith nurtured by our child.