For the grown up holding this: the story and the three lines at the end are for reading out loud. Everything in between is for you. If your child is nearly asleep, skip to the lines. They are short on purpose.
There was a bag by the door.
It was packed. Pencils in the front pocket, a jumper folded on top, the zip pulled all the way round so nothing could fall out. It was the smallest bag in the house and it was standing up straight like it was ready.
The girl was not ready.
She was in bed with the covers up to her chin and her eyes wide open in the dark, and she said the thing children say when the room has gone quiet and the day has run out of distractions. "I do not know where anything is."
She meant the new school. She meant the door you go in, and the peg you hang your coat on, and the room, and the face of the person who will say her name. She had never seen any of it. She had made a whole morning up in her head and she had been walking around inside it since dinner, and it was too big for her, and she could not put it down.
Then she said, quieter, "Will you come with me?"
And here is what her mother did not say. She did not say it will be lovely. She did not say you will make ten friends by lunchtime. She did not promise a good day, because a promise like that gets remembered on a bad day, and children keep receipts.
She sat on the edge of the bed and she said this instead.
"God is there already."
The girl thought about it.
"In the morning?"
"He is in the morning now. He did not wait for us. He is standing in tomorrow the way He is standing in this room. And when you walk in that door He will not be arriving behind you. He will already be inside."
The girl looked at the ceiling for a while.
"So I am not the first one there."
"You are not even close to first, my love."
He goes first, and He does not send them ahead
Hear me, you who are sitting on the edge of that bed with nothing left in your hands. I know that seat. It is the hardest chair in the house, and nobody thanks you for it, and you are doing something holy in it.
And you are not sending your child into tomorrow ahead of God. Deuteronomy 31:8 says the Lord goes before you, and the Spirit is the one who is already standing in a morning neither of you has seen.
Your child is not frightened of the day. Your child is frightened of the not knowing, which is a different animal altogether, and it is the one that comes out at night. All day they were busy. Now the lights are off and there is nothing left to look at, so the mind builds the morning out of whatever it has, and what it has is very little, so it builds it out of dread. That is not a fault in your child. That is a small imagination doing exactly what a big one does, only without the years to argue back.
So we do not argue with it. We do not tell them the morning will be wonderful, because we do not know, and if it is a hard morning they will remember that we said it. We say the thing that is true whatever the morning turns out to be.
He gets there first.
That is the whole word tonight, and I want you to feel the weight of it, because it is not a comfort we made up to get a child to sleep. It is what God said about a people standing at the edge of a country they had never seen, with a leader who was not going in with them.
The Lord Himself goes before you. He is with you. He does not let go of you and He does not leave you. Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed.Deuteronomy 31:8
Read it again slowly, because there is an order in it and the order is everything. He goes before. Then He is with. The going ahead comes first. Nobody was sent out in front to check whether it was safe. Nobody small was made the advance party.
Your child is not the advance party.
That is what tightens a chest at bedtime, and adults have the same knot, we just call it something more dignified. The feeling is: I have to go into tomorrow alone and find out what is in it. And the answer of God is not it will be fine. The answer of God is I am already in there, and I have been for some time, and I will be holding the door.
Nothing is asked of your child tonight except to sleep. The morning has a Keeper and it is not a five year old.
So here is the moment, and it is small, and small is right for tonight.
We are not going to ask your child to be brave. Bravery is a heavy coat for a little body and it usually does not fit until morning. We are going to ask them to hand it over instead.
Tomorrow is not theirs to carry up the stairs. It never was. And you are allowed to put it down before you sleep. Scripture says He gives His beloved sleep, and the Spirit is the one who takes the weight rather than asking you to hold it more calmly. It belongs to the God who is standing in it, and the honest truth is that it never belonged to you either, and you have been carrying it in your chest since about four o'clock.
So put it down. Both of you. Not tomorrow. Now, in this room, with the lamp still on.
Declare this over yourself
These three lines are for your child to say after you, one at a time. Say each one first, let them repeat it, and do not hurry them.
And know what you are handing them. This authority is not theirs by nature and it is not yours either. It is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you and to the small person in that bed, so you speak as one who represents the King and not as one hoping out loud. Scripture is what the words stand on and the Holy Spirit is what carries them. We say it under His will, never ours. However He answers tomorrow, the outcome is His, and He is good in it.
- Tomorrow, God is there before me. Jesus, You go first. I am not going alone.
- Night, you are not in charge of me. God keeps me while I sleep and He does not fall asleep. I can close my eyes.
- Jesus, the big morning belongs to You. In Your name I put it down, and I go to sleep.
Deuteronomy 31:8
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