Bible Stories for the Young
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Jesus knew that this night was going to be extremely stressful, confusing, and heartbreaking for Him and His disciples. Jesus knew Peter would be devastated when he heard that rooster crow. Jesus knew most of them would leave Him and run away and hide in the chaos, and that would fill them with pain. And He knew they would be completely heartbroken to see Him die. He knew they would feel like their only hope in life was crushed and their visions for the future would be gone.
Knowing all that, this is what Jesus said to His dear friends, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled or worried or stressed out. Trust in God, and trust in Me! Ohhh, there’s more than enough room in My Father’s home. If that wasn’t true, would I have told you that I’m going to get a place ready for you?! And when everything is ready for you, I will come back and get you. That way, you’ll always be with Me where I am, forever and ever. And you know the way to where I’m going.”
Thomas looked confused and said, “But, Lord, we don’t know where You’re going, so how can we know the way?” (Thomas is still sounding a little troubled, isn’t he?)
But Jesus replied, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one can get to the Father except through Me. And if you’ve known Me, then you will know My Father too. In fact, from now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”
Jesus is telling Thomas, “Don’t let this stress you out. You know Me, and I am all you need. So trust.”
With all these troubling things that were about to happen, Jesus said don’t LET your hearts be troubled. That makes it sound like they had a choice, that they could decide to calm their hearts. And Jesus was asking that they trust His Father and trust Him.
And we’ll have those same choices in our lives. There’ll be things that happen where we can choose to feel all troubled and knotted up inside, or we can choose to look to Jesus, calm down, and just trust Him. He can calm our hearts, if we let Him.
In fact, I imagine you get chances to practice this calming down in very small ways every day. They might even feel like big things to you at the time… Like when the doctor needs to give you a shot, or like when another child accidentally knocks over your tower of blocks, or when you drop and bust up your model of the solar system. It’s okay. Don’t let your heart be troubled. You can stay calm and use those things to practice not being easily troubled over stuff.
And I’ll give you a little pro tip. For you little children, many times that calming down just starts with looking into the eyes of your mom or dad or the adult who’s trying to help you. Just look in their eyes and let go of all the knots and the emotions. Trust, trust, trust. Jesus likes that.
We’re gonna have to hang onto these words of Jesus as the end of time gets closer. The world is full of tough stuff. And God warns us that things are going to get tougher and darker and crazier as the end of time gets closer. There’ll be hurtful, mean, lying, destructive chaos in life, just like it was for Jesus. But, we can’t let our hearts be troubled. We gotta be steady. Trust Jesus and His Father.