Mindy and I were out for a walk this past week with our two youngest, Davis and Peter. As their tiny primary-colored frames bobbed along all I could think was, “Dear God, help me not to ruin these sweet kids!”
The world is a hard place—too hard for their soft faces and gentle spirits. As parents and teachers, we all try to protect the innocence of childhood. We want to shelter our kids from the all-too-familiar stressors of adulthood: news, politics, tragedy, financial strain, anxiety, death, discouragement, disillusionment.
In his final words to his disciples, Father Zosima of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov encourages his fellow monks, “Take care of the people and guard their hearts. Go on educating them quietly. That’s your duty as monks, for this is a godbearing people.”
Guard their hearts. We often think about guarding our own hearts, but what does it mean to guard the heart of a child?
Zosima continues: “Fathers and teachers, watch over the people’s faith.” As spiritual fathers of the Russian people, he exhorts his fellow monks to provide shelter to fledgling faith. Like a blanket over a spring azalea, they are to protect new blossoms from the world’s chilling frost.
Our job as “fathers and teachers” is not to engender faith in children, this is the work of God, but to “watch over” their faith. The faith of a child is tender, fragile, and new. We work to keep out the trampling influences, the scorching words, and the harsh realities that would kill faith before it has a chance to bloom.
But so often, we are the ones. We invade our children’s lives with our experience-hardened cynicism. We confuse their sincere minds with sarcasm. We chafe their soft spirits by our own callousness.
Who will guard their hearts from us?
Surely, this is why the Apostle Paul admonishes fathers not to embitter their children, lest they become discouraged (Col. 3:21). So often we think we are fixing the children when we are really breaking them—we are the ones who need to be fixed.
The words of Father Zosima ring in our ears: “Go on educating them quietly. That’s your duty as monks, for this is a godbearing people.” God has chosen to be borne in the hearts of his children. The Father’s teaching is gentle. He goes on educating us quietly. As fathers, mothers, and teachers, may we do the same. In doing so, may God undo the hard-heartedness of growing old:
“And calling to him a child, Jesus put him in the midst of the disciples and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 18:2-3).
In our house, we do a lot of kneading and crust-rolling and biscuit-cutting, which means a lot of floury scraps and bits of dough get hardened onto the counters. This go-to kitchen workhorse is essential for cleaning up hardened messes:
Bench Scraper!
Look for a bench scraper that is a solid piece of stainless steel—plastic or wooden handles will eventually corrode! It should be thick enough that it won’t bend when you leverage against it. Also, make sure it has a bevelled edge so that its fine tip will be effective for scraping, cutting, etc.
Bench scrapers are useful for more than just scraping benches. We use it for portioning dough for bread, rolls, or tortillas, for slicing scones into triangles (it also doubles as a spatula for transporting said scones to the baking tray), and for smoothing the icing on the side of a cake.