I stood in the bathroom washing my hands, listening to my toddler bang on the door.  “Mama!  Mama!”  As frustrating as it can sometimes be to be unable even to go to the bathroom in peace, on this particular occasion, my little man didn’t want me; he just wanted to know I was still there.  So I talked to him, to let him hear my voice until I’d dried my hands and could open the door.

What DOES Peek-a-Boo Have to Do with God?

You’re probably wondering how in the world those two things are related – or what either one has to do with God.  They’re related to each other because of a continuum – and believe it or not, it’s an essential foundation for our little ones to have, for theological reasons.

See, to us, Peek-a-Boo is just a fun or silly game.  But to babies, it’s much more than that.  Tiny ones don’t understand that anything exists beyond what they, themselves, experience.  Playing games like Peek-a-Boo help them to understand that after you’ve disappeared from site, you’ll reappear.  And eventually that grows into understanding that you weren’t ever actually gone, just out of sight.

Likewise, with my bathroom scenario.  There’s a little more “finality” to a closed door that shuts out (or in) a whole room than a pair of hands or the edge of a blanket that momentarily blocks one’s line of vision.  But it’s the same idea.  Caleb needed to know that, even though he couldn’t see me, I was still there.

And isn’t the most basic necessity for a belief in God the ability to believe that our inability to see something doesn’t negate its existence?  It is utterly essential to be able to believe that something can exist even though you can’t see it, or it’s impossible to believe in God.

So when we spend time engaging with our babies — even in what seems to us a silly game — we are building knowledge and understanding in them that are crucial to our faith!