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Into His Arms: Seeing Jesus Through Children’s Eyes

by Sigmund Brouwer

c. 1999

Beautifully illustrated with classic (northern European) pictures of Jesus and children, this book uses scripture and Brouwer’s own parables and ficticious thoughts to bring Jesus to life the way He might have been seen by the children He lived and interacted with.

In this volume, we meet the selfish, spoiled, glutinous son of the rich man whom Jesus healed with just a word. We meet the young boy whose mother packed him a few fish and loaves for a lunch.

Brouwer starts his book with Mary the mother of Jesus and goes through Jesus’ life chronologically from there. H uses some children which are in the Biblical narratives such as the boy possessed of demons that threw him in the fire but he also invents children we don’t meet in the Bible. He tells us of a young boy who watches the friends of the paralyzed man tear apart a roof. He introduces us to the beloved daughter of the leper healed by Jesus’ touch.

He also tells Jesus version of the Boy in the Temple. He tells the story of a boy who witnesses what he thought would be Jesus stoning. He tells of a swineherd who witnessed the healing of the man in the graveyard.

Most of these stories are believable. Some are marginally so. In his introduction, Brouwer pleads his case as a novelist and begs forgiveness for writing about Jesus through the eyes of children as a novelist and not a historian.

All in all, this is a book for thought. What was it like for the people to witness the miracles of Jesus first hand? Who was standing around watching as only children could? And what of the families of those he healed?

This should probably not be read by those who take all books about Jesus as absolute fact but if you’re looking for something to make you look deeper, this will provoke your thought processes.

Complete with scripture in the sidebars to go with each story.