A child's wisdom

Sunday morning I spent an hour in the company of second graders as they learned about Moses and the golden calf. The theme for this month's Sunday School lesson is patience, and those Israelites were anything but patient as they waited for Moses to come down from the mount!

Near the end of the lesson one of the teachers played a "true or false" game with the kids, lining them up and having them jump forward or backward off a line in response to questions read from a card; forward if they thought it was true, and backward if false.

The teacher called out this question: "True or False: God always answers prayers with a yes or a no." 

Several kids leapt forward, a few back, then forward to join the crowd. One little boy stood still on the line, hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie, a look of deep concentration on his face. "But..." he called out. "But...sometimes the answer is 'maybe.' Or...'later.'"

Oh, the wisdom of that child. 

His voice was almost lost in the giggling and chatter of the other students, but his words were so deep that I wanted to rush over and hug him. I know that God does not ever deliberately tease us with "maybe...maybe not," but I know that His answers are often hard for us to comprehend and may seem like a non-answer at the time. He often asks us to wait, to continue prayer and faith and perseverance.  The answer can be "wait" or "the time is later" or "my child, you cannot understand right now. Understanding will come with time."  God always answers, whether we see it as a clear "yes or no" or not. 

How many times as a kid did we ask our parents "But why?" only to have the response be "Because I said so." Parents often have reasons that cannot be explained to a child, so why on earth do we think we are comprehensive enough to understand and anticipate God's every move? I can point this out and say "what arrogance!" with ease, while still knowing I am guilty of it every day. We are surrounded by knowledge and science and technology that provide us with easy answers to all of life's questions...and yet. God should still be a place where we are free to express unabashed wonder and awe. We don't have to understand God completely to know that He is great and good.

I am thankful for a second-grader who reminded me that God is great and good and always answers us, even if we can't always understand the answer...at least not until later.