Who of us remembers screaming their lungs out, as kids, protesting their tummy time? I don’t. But we hated it, didn’t we? I know because our son hates his tummy time. It’s tough, and ‘unnecessarily’ tires him. Or so he thinks (or feels?)!

Now, tummy time, though tiring, toughens him, tightening his thew and training him to stand and walk on his own.

And yet, if my son was to think through this, he might intuit that his mum and dad hate on him. How else could passionate parents put him through such suffering without shame or sadness?

But, it is not true that we take our son through tummy time training out of antipathy or lack of care. To the contrary!

Watching and hearing your son scream tends to wear your good intentions out. This morning, his cry caused my wife to charge out of her bed, wondering if he had not overstayed his minutes, only to find me standing and peering at his protests.

Now, of course, such thoughts— that we don’t care— if they may be so called (I wonder if and what babies think!), quickly fade like fog with the passing of the phase. I only need to hold him for a few seconds or so and he will be silent and smiling at me as if nothing ensued. Perhaps that’s why none of us remembers hating tummy time so much.

And, surely, he also will do the same to his future children. But for now, tummy time is a tug of war, of sorts.

Why am I saying all this?

A lot of us confuse love with pampering. ‘If God loves me,’ we say, ‘then He will not permit anything like this to come my way.’ He dare not get in the way of our happiness, or else, He is not good.

Like kids, we scream at any appearance of suffering, protesting those we perceive to be spoilers of our party-time.

Without intending it, perhaps, we begin to think of grace as God giving in to our desires, whatever sanctified names we give those desires.

But if well perceived, the sanctifying grace of God is that spanner in the works of the flesh reminding us that God does not necessarily exist for us to have happy holidays— especially holidays that exist at His expense.

For, the goal of grace is not happiness, but holiness, in Him. Now, holiness produces lasting joy.

We are told in Titus 2:12 that God revealed grace to train His children in godliness. The Greek word παιδεύω often translated as teach in that text means to train up a child. It is ‘to assist in the development of a person’s ability to make appropriate choices, that is, to practice discipline’ (BDAG).

This verb is used 13 times in the New Testament. It means chastisement to reform behavior (Luke 23:16, 22; 1 Cor 11:32; 2 Cor 6:9, Heb 12:6, 7, 10; Rev 3:19), training up in learning (Acts 7:22, 22:3, 1 Tim 1:20), and/or correcting wayward behavior (2 Tim 2:25).

The idea is that love rebukes. It chastens and disciplines. It is not merely apathetic kindness, one that cares not about the morals of its object.

And yet when the modern man thinks of love, it is this apathetic kindness in view. But as C. S. Lewis starkly remarked in his The Problem of Pain:

It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most memorable sense.

It does appear, indeed, that our modern mind has forgotten the goal and nature of true love.

But God hasn’t, which is why by His grace, we have tummy time. We may not like it, always, but through it, God builds and strengthens our spiritual muscles. We become more selfless, self-controlled, patient, just, caring, and content. Through grace, we learn to endure hardships that threaten our inner peace and identity.

We ought to remember that we put our children through training because we love them. God chastens us for the same reason.

Therefore, may we never confuse love with indifference to sin and immaturity, for when we do, our discipline-less kindness will produce anarchy.

Let tummy time remind us that we don’t need to be ‘nice’ to be loving. True love corrects and challenges people to change.

Tummy time is God’s grace at work in our weak and immature lives resulting in more godly and responsible children of God. And like kids, we will quickly forget how discomforting it was the day we see His face, finally enjoying the lasting fruit of our training.