What to do with our kids’ questions this week

The world seems to be breaking right apart this week. It is horrifying and overwhelming. And when my 11 year old son sits down to breakfast, his frozen waffles smeared with peanut butter, he scans over the front page of the newspaper; stories of death and devastation making their way right into our kitchen, and he fires off this question, “Why, mom? Why does God let these awful things happen?” I nearly stop breathing.

Because there are ways that the newsreels are explaining what happened. There are words that the talking heads are blaring out from behind their anchor desks, and smart people writing things and my Facebook newsfeed all attempting to tell me how I should process these events in Orlando. But in the dawning of the morning summer light, I quickly realize that none of those words matter. As my boys turn their eyes toward me, the paper strewn on the table between us, the only thing that matters is what comes out of my mouth next.

And honestly, I fight the urge to snatch that paper from his hand and turn the conversation towards our plans for swimming later. I do not want to look at the awful ugliness here at my kitchen table with my boys. I do not want to look at it at this darkness.

But I am too slow. He is already recounting the horrific story as he reads it from the paper and suddenly his little brother chimes in too, “God loves people. God made people. God is bigger than those bad guys. He will win.” There is no edge of doubt in his voice. He has been taught that God is good and big and victorious and even in the face of unspeakable evil, he believes it. What was it Jesus told the disciples, “I tell you the truth unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Yeah.

But my 7 year old has not felt the sting of death. He speaks of that which he does not know. He has not stood terrified for his life in the midst of gun fire. He has not experienced the gut wrenching pain of a loved one’s unexplainable death. He speaks of God’s goodness because he only knows God’s goodness. And me too, really.

I have no wisdom to offer here. I see the horror. I hear of the pain, and I feel the sadness for those families and that city. But I feel helpless. Maybe you can relate?

I sit in my quiet suburban house, nestled in my safe cul de sac with this rambunctious gang of boys knowing nothing of real pain and suffering, nothing of actual evil. I long to love Jesus and my neighbor, but I spend most of the time messing that up.

And when I am honest, I don’t even like to talk about the awful ugly parts of this world.

So all the people choosing up their sides and saying who’s to blame, they leave me spun in my inability to take it all in. And what in the world are we all to do?

I look across at his face. That 11 year old boy, and that question hangs heavy in the air “Why, Mom?”

I don’t know. I cannot speak to the politics of this issue or figure out the best side to sit on as the details unfold about what happened. But, as I read the heartbreaking stories in the paper, I realize what I do know. I know my Creator.

I know a God who is big and good and present with us when we are hurting. A God whose heart breaks to see the pain of his creation. A God who cries out through the words of his prophets, “Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4).  And when his people wander from him, he pursues them relentlessly. “For I am God and not man – the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath. They will follow the Lord.” (Hosea 11: 9-10). That is the God I know.

A God who promises that “neither death, nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate the love for us that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Evil can be loud and evident in our world. It can blow up buildings and shoot out night clubs. It can take over the daily news cycles and leave us cowering in the safety of our cul de sacs. It can teach us that there is nothing we can do and make us fear those who are different. But the worst thing it does is convince us to look the other way; to refuse to see.

As I watch my children munching on their breakfast, I feel God answer my helplessness. He is the answer. His armor that he gives us to put on every day. His reminder that we are the light of the world and that right there at my table sit the things that I can do to make it better. I can teach them that God so loved the world. That we love because he first loved us. I can build them into weapons that fight hate with God’s love. I can show them how to stand. I can remind them of whose they are. But most importantly, I can teach them to take their lights into the darkness.

You see, despite what the commentators rant on about, our battle is not against flesh and blood. It is against rulers and principalities we cannot see. It is against this present darkness. And that sounds a bit weird, I get it. My kids’ eyes sorta glaze over when I start talking like this. Yours too, maybe.

But here’s what I am learning.

There is no place so dark that Jesus can’t bring light. There is no battle so fierce that God cannot win.

We can look the darkness straight in the face. We can even show it bit by bit to our kids. In fact, as much as I don’t like to do this, we must show our kids the darkness.

So, I take a deep breath and in the safety of our little suburban house, in my little corner of the world, I sit and eat waffles with my boys and we talk of a man and how he took a gun and destroyed all these peoples’ lives. We look evil right in the face. We talk about the horrible realness of living in a broken world.

But then I take them by the shoulders, and I turn them around, these little souls with which I have been entrusted.

I turn them right around and show them the light. I point them towards Jesus. I point them towards this promise. “A new heaven and a new earth…the dwelling of God {will be} among men and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God, himself will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:1-3).

We continue to pray hard for the families who are hurting, for the scared and the lonely and for our country that seems to be breaking apart over this.

I know that I will never be able to answer all of their question correctly. I can’t even figure out whose side I am supposed to be on in the middle of this whole thing. So, I am just going to stand with my 7 year old. “God loves people. God made people and He is bigger than all the bad guys. He will win.”

“In all these things we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:37).