“Mommy, when is my birthday?”
My three-year-old daughter looked expectantly at me. Knowing the date, April 14, would mean nothing to her, I tried to connect it to something familiar.
“Honey,” I said, “your birthday is either just before or just after Easter.”
“Oh, great,” she responded. “You don’t know when my birthday is either!”
Many years have passed since I had that conversation with my daughter—that’s her son in the picture above—but her comment still makes me laugh. It also made me realize I’m a lot like her. It also reminds me I’m a lot like a preschooler. If things in my life don’t make sense, I tend to jump to wrong conclusions.
One conclusion I often land on is that God is waiting for me to figure out whatever I don’t understand. Of course, his Word says nothing like that. The very idea is as far-fetched as my little girl thinking I didn’t know when she was born.
What our Father does say is for us to be still and know he is God.
It’s that simple. And hard. It’s hard because I want him to explain what he’s up to. But that would be like me explaining to my three-year-old that Easter falls on different dates according to the moon.
All my child really needed to know was that I love her and she could trust me to remember her special day.
And isn’t that what we need from our Father—to know he loves us and we can trust him?
When life makes no sense, understanding that truth turns out to be enough.
I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Ephesians 3:17-18 NIV