From the Mouths of Baby Dragons
“Why didn’t Jesus just say things normally? I mean if He really wanted people to know about Him, why not just say it?”
“If we think our God is the one, true God and other people think the same thing about their god, how do we know we are right?”
“Is the only battle God didn’t win, the one where Satan tricked Adam and Eve?”
“Have you ever seen a miracle?”
These are just some of the questions my beloved offspring have asked me this summer. Though we wanted to be intentional about our kids owning their own faiths and asking their honest questions, I cannot say that I was prepared for some of these big hitters. Especially on lazy, warm summer days. Weren’t you all supposed to just splash in the sprinkler? I thought my biggest concern this summer was going to be SPF. But alas, our oldest son’s life verse that we prayed over him at birth, has come to pass it seems.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13 NASB
At least we’ve got the seeking part down.
I recognize this is a good time to jump into the Word together and model how we seek answers to our questions. I wish I had the presence of mind for us to sit in a circle and dig deep together. Maybe with a fresh, hot cup of coffee. But in reality, I found myself looking around the room for the grown-up to jump in and then I was pummeled in my side by a three-year-old pretending to be a baby dragon. Needless to say, we are still working out the answers together.
Our God is many, many things, and one of those great traits is that He is incomprehensible, literally meaning, “not able to be understood”. Psalm 145: 3 puts it plainly:
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.
So how do we answer these questions? Where do we even begin? I think this may be where the “miracle” part of the above questioning comes into play. I am learning that just because God is incomprehensible, does not mean that He has not provided us with His Word in which we are able to sufficiently know Him.
Yes, God tells us we will never fully know Him. Our little minds do not have the capacity to fully know Him. However, He assures us that He will make Himself known to us. Both in this lifetime, and in the one to come:
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Corinthians 13: 12 NIV
The miracle for me here is that I am fully known even as He is not. To know someone else’s needs and desires, to know their heart even as they are unable or unwilling to know more of yours, is a source of deep loneliness within the confines of our humanity. Yet here we have a God who does just that, not only because we could not possibly fathom Him anyways, but because it simply would not be good for us. It is not in our best interest. That is both an enigma to me, and a miracle.
After an extraordinarily rough morning yesterday, I tried to pull our brood up from the pit and gathered us all together so we could pray and ask Jesus for forgiveness. After all, instructing your brother to knock down your other brother’s PJ Masks game is serious business. So is listening to your brother when he instructs you to make a bad choice. We needed to regroup. We prayed together and said “sorry” and even Mama apologized for her anger as encouraged to do so by her boys.
The last to speak was the baby dragon. “Andrew, do you have anything you want to say to Jesus?” “Yes. You love me.”
Sometimes miracles come from the mouths of fire-breathing baby dragons.