Spiritual Toddlers

Holly Dodd imagines that we are all spiritual toddlers in our eager efforts to love and serve God. 

Have you ever let your toddler help with the housework? Toddlers can be eager little helpers. They are joyful and determined as they imitate you in the kitchen: carefully loading or unloading the dishes, sweeping the floor with a broom taller than themselves, or dragging in the step stool or chair to climb up to counter height to get a job done.  

In their minds, toddlers are practically adults, and they are so proud of the good work they are doing to assist your efforts. They may become pushy even, insisting that they can accomplish the impossible alone, without your help. Sometimes they are actually helpful and sometimes not so much, but we let them help. With practice, their skills certainly increase, but often their “help” does not save much time or energy; sometimes the task must even quietly be done again after they walk away.  

Toddlers love to help. They are eager to imitate and to serve. Of course, their service is often less than perfect, but you know this is how they learn and grow. This may also be how they show you love.  

You might offer gentle corrections from time to time, but you let them try even when they splash water out of the sink and wipe the crumbs onto the floor. You would never squash their pride when they beam with pride over a job well done, even when you know you might have to quietly rearrange the dishes in the dishwasher after they leave the room. It is natural to take delight in their eagerness and joy in service; your heart overflows.   

We Just Want to Help 

When it comes to our spiritual journeys, we are often the toddlers. We love our Father and we, too, can become eager helpers. We see the “big job” that God has in our world, and we want to help! We sometimes want to “do it myself” and show how independent we are. We want God to be proud of the big jobs we are doing. We behave a great deal like 2-year-olds loading the dishwasher.  

God, loving Father that He is, encourages us, He hands us the things we need to do our little jobs. Maybe He’ll even move a dish or two while we aren’t looking, in order to make our task a little easier. He cheers us on as we “help” but often we are hardly “helping” at all.  

He could do it all without us, but He enjoys our feeble attempts at helping because He loves us in the same way we love our eager little helpers in the kitchen. He finds joy in our eagerness to please him, our eagerness to effect change. He doesn’t need us; He simply loves us. And we are learning, by our successes and by our failures, how to serve and how to return that love.  

When we teach our toddlers, we are training them to be successful adults one day. We are training them up so they can do these tasks alone, independently, serving self as needed. But we delight in their little acts of service simply because we love them. We love them more than we understand. Offering them opportunities to serve not only trains them for the future, but it offers a unique opportunity for them to show love to us in return.  

God Loves Us More Than We Know  

We love those little helpers so much, and God loves us even more. He does not desire that we refine our skills so well that we can work alone without Him. God asks us to remain as children in our relationship with Him. We literally never need to grow out of that joyful and eager toddler stage of our spiritual lives.  

Our attempts to love Him and join Him in his mission are never more than toddler attempts. God loves for us to be children, and to “help” and serve Him emphatically and eagerly. When our little tasks of love are complete, He will wrap us in a warm embrace every time.  

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Copyright 2025 Holly Dodd
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