it was one of the big ones.
Mama, if God created the whole world and space and everything else...who created Him?
I remember being seven and six and I remember laying in bed trying to imagine forever until my tummy hurt and my brain ached and never getting closer to an answer that seemed to satisfy.
Our longing to know God always leads us deeper...
if we let it. If we let time slow us instead of hurry us so that our hearts lean into the desire for Him...we may not find all the answers, but we will find Him in whom all the treasures of mystery dwells. I am beginning to believe that knowing Him satisfies more than any answer could.
4:30 found me stirring together spices and sauce and meat and placing buttered bread under the coils of the broiler while trying to manage and contain the fighting siblings and the crying, teething baby and in the cacophony of noise I almost missed it, I almost missed her quiet voice.
Lyla, my oldest who struggles the most with trust, was sitting beside Elias and in the pockets of peace that would pop up she would try and talk with him about God, urging him to love Him and to know Him so that one day we would all be together, with no fighting, no crying, no arguing. Instead of all the bad, she said, we would be all good and we would be with Jesus forever.
And then he asked how.
There is no greater privilege, I think, as a mama, then to kneel in front of your child and take their hands and explain that the way to God is The Way Himself and then pray those words that lead that child Home.
And a seed is planted and the way will be long and lonely and full of sacrifice and death to self, but it will be worth it - so worth it and I pray that Elias will know that, deep in his marrow as he walks out his faith in a world that will fight to destroy it.
God - He plants the Kingdom within us and we find that He is in our midst and today, in the chaos of hungry bellies and bubbling, steamy pots and a dog scratching at the door, He planted the Kingdom in the heart of my son.
Elias - His name means, "Yahweh is my God" and so He has become - God Himself has heard the cry of my heart for my son to desire Him and today He has made him His very own.
Adoring:
Father God, thank you. Thank you for pursuing after my son and for placing in him a desire to be Yours. Strengthen him with Your Love. Let him be a man marked with mercy, a man who walks humbly, a man who acts justly. In a world that will try to destroy him and his love for You, let his faith grow Daniel-strong - strong enough to rest in the face of a lion's jaw and praise you in the midst of the enemy's entrapment.
Father God, thank you. Thank you for pursuing after my son and for placing in him a desire to be Yours. Strengthen him with Your Love. Let him be a man marked with mercy, a man who walks humbly, a man who acts justly. In a world that will try to destroy him and his love for You, let his faith grow Daniel-strong - strong enough to rest in the face of a lion's jaw and praise you in the midst of the enemy's entrapment.
Let him hear, at the end of his life, Your voice of blessing as you welcome him Home.
