When You Don’t Understand His Ways
“But I don’t understand…” Elayna commented during our evening devotions. “How can God be everlasting?”
This is the question Elayna had during our night time Bible discussions together.
She really wanted to know.
“I understand how God will always be in the future. But, how could He have always been before there was even anything created? What did He do? Was He just bored all the time? I don’t get it. I believe it, but I don’t get it.”
Questions like this come up quite often when you are raising kids.
Kids think and wonder. Then, they ask.
But the reality is that we all think and wonder… we just don’t always have the courage to ask.
We don’t ask because for most of these questions there isn’t a good answer.
The answers to these questions are deep, vague, and difficult to describe.
We have a hard time explaining these tough things to our kids or even to ourselves.
Whether it is questions about heaven or questions about creation or questions about miracles or questions about prayer… the answers are just plain tough.
There is no easy answer.
We can dig and research and study and read… all really good things and things I enjoy!
But, there isn’t always a full, detailed, easy answer to find.
I’ve come to realize that it is the very fact these questions are hard to answer or explain or understand that makes God… God.
God is God.
He is big and more than we can imagine or wrap our human brains around.
The concepts of forever will keep our brains spinning unless we just choose to accept the simple truth that God always was and always is.
We have to choose to have faith.
We have to trust that God answers prayer even if we don’t always see it.
We have to believe that God created the earth even if we don’t understand how it is possible.
We have to believe that God is 3 in 1 even if we can’t dice it apart and explain each piece of the puzzle.
We have to settle in our heart that each big, incredible God concept we encounter is why God is God.
His ways are His ways and we can trust, believe and know that He is God whether we understand Him or not.
As Elayna and I talked about this, she said, “Well, I’m definitely going to ask Him what He did with all that time before He created the earth. I’m going to ask Him a lot of questions when I get to heaven.”
It was so precious.
Her ability to exercise faith and believe whether she had answers now or not.
A true, childlike, pure faith.
Knowing that big concepts are part of how big and great God is.
We don’t have to understand it all. That is part of what makes God who He is.
A great big God.
I often told my youth group, if you can understand or explain God then is He really God? If our small brains can contain all the mysteries of the universe then God is very small. But you are right, these questions drive us crazy! Make us think. Stretch our faith.
Elayna is precious! I remember wondering the same things when I was young….and even at age 63 there are things too marvelous to comprehend! One of my favorite sayings is…”God is God!”…and I often say it at times when things can’t be explained. I also say “God is God”…when we are simply blown away by an awesome answer to our prayers! Yes…”God is God!”…and that makes me feel very secure! There is no doubt that the God who created all things will have all the answers to our questions someday when we are in His kingdom…and until then we just love Him, believe Him, and trust Him with our very lives, and praise Him…because, “God is God!”…and He is worthy of honor and praise! Love, Linda