A New Discovery

When I go to my site meter, it's interesting to find out how people get to Emerging Kids.

This was one such page, an interesting post to ponder at Beacon Hills . Anything that affects us as grown-ups has implications for children. In this post they talk about the absence and presence of God both contributing to our relationship with God. I haven't thought about that. It's an interesting post with art to ponder.

I have thought about God hiding and having to look for Him. I've also thought about how hard it is to trust God while children and the people we love wrestle with God. It's hard for us but it's healthy for them to wrestle for their own faith. We want to tell them how to find their way out and have it done. We need faith in God's love for them and wisdom to know how to walk with them and still let them wrestle. Baby birds have to peck their own way out of an egg. If we help them, they don't grow strong enough to live once they make it out. At least that's what I was told when I was little. Maybe faith is like that, too.

We can ponder but we don't have to explain everything. The way I understand it, the Orthodox traditionally respond to unanswerable questions with "It's a mystery." It keeps us wrestling to know God. It keeps us running after God.

Although most of the stories of scripture are stories about when God was there, it would be an interesting study to do alone or with kids looking at the stories where Jesus was late or when it seemed that God wasn't there. Even in scripture, sometimes God wasn't there when someone thought He should be. We focus on the fact that He came, which is good, but we don't always give people time to ponder how it felt thinking He wasn't going to come. I don't even think we need a "why." Just the idea of Jesus or God not being there is something to ponder. Maybe it would help us face the times when it seems to be true.