Lately F and I have been having theological discussions. They often have to do with the “how” of things…
No Hands?
“How, ” he asks me frequently, ” could God hold the world if he doesn’t have any hands?”
“Well, “I said,” first of all often when we speak of God holding things or touching things, we are speaking poetically and we aren’t trying to give an exact description as much as we are trying to make a picture with words. Think about your boat in the bath. Does it float or sink?”
“Float.”
“What holds it up?”
“The water.”
“Does the water have hands?”
“No.”
“But we still use words like ‘hold up’, or ‘suspend’ or ‘sustain’ when we talk about the water and the boat. We do the same thing with God, we use words that are close to what we’re trying to describe but not completely accurate.”
That satisfied him for a few days while he thought it over.
Then out of the blue..
“Jesus has hands because he was a man, so he can touch things.”
It was clearly a conclusion and not the beginning of a discussion.
The Sky
Yesterday on the way home from school…the cloud cover had broken into a lovely blue with nice puffy cumulus clouds. As we crossed the river….
“Look!” he said, “That one is an airplane! With a little window and a big window! And that one is a dinosaur! And there are mountains over there!”
There was a little pause while he gazed at the sky.
“Isn’t it cool how God makes pictures in the sky? Just for us to see. How does he make things without hands?”
“What does it say in Genesis 1?” I asked, (he can read this chapter himself and does for his devotions from time to time)” In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep…”
“And God said, “Let there be light.” he finished.
“Right, God can speak things into being.”
Somehow then the conversation changed, I can’t always follow how he gets from here to there…
“So we are going to fix the earth and God is going to fix the sky and heal it since we can’t reach.” he concluded marrying up the creativity he saw in the sky and the creativity he knows we are to exercise.
I love talking with him and every time we have on of these conversations I can’t help thinking that if this is what we talk about when he is 4 what will we be discussing when he’s 14 and 24?
Oh my!!! What precious, precious ponderings of a young heart seeking Truth! You are so wise to engage in his conversations about the things on his young heart. It is no wonder the Lord commends to us the faith of a child as our model. Thank you so much for linking up this wonderful telling! 🙂 And isn’t it so perfect to have these conversations recorded for the future?!! What a heritage of faith you are recording!!!
I love to talk so we just talk all the time. It constantly amazes me what the two older ones think about. W is just starting to talk so we aren’t there yet with him. Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much time explaining and not enough time enforcing…these conversations are encouraging though….K