Yes But... No

.

I was reading about some of Jesus' miracles to my 5 and 3 year old sons when it occured to me to ask if they knew what the word miracle meant. When the 5 year old answered no I attempted to explain.

Exlaining what a miracle is is harder than one might think. It's easy to end up describing either Harry Potter or an X Man and not divine nature.

My 5 year old got excited and interrupted my obviously boring miracle-example of water turned to wine. "Did Jesus ever," he looked around for ideas and grabbed the pencil from the table in front of him, "make a pencil float up and make it fly into a bad guy's eye?"

I must have looked horrified because he added, "Not to poke through the bad guy's eye or anything, just to give him a really bad black eye."

My 3 year old was listening with rapt attention until I attempted to explain that no, in fact God's plan was not to send Jesus to beat up bad guys, but to love them and turn them into good guys.

Boring.

A couple of early mornings later my still pajama clad 3 year old had kissed his dad goodbye and shut the front door with big-boy aplomb. I reminded him to lock the door. "Why?", he asked.

"We don't want bad guys to come in."

"But God loves bad guys."

Yes, but....



.