meditatio at the water's edge

If you haven't read it, read Joel's entry listed directly below this one. Read it - especially if you r involved with water's edge.

Today I'm reading Brian McLaren's "The Story We Find Ourselves In." What an amazing re-telling of the kingdom of God.

As I am reading the final chapters, as our author is painting an incredible picture of the kingdom, it occured to me that my four year old daughter is increasingly entering kingdom life.

While the church has been so bent on pointing to our sins and failures for the past centuries, our children don't grow up that way. We teach them that way. Instead, Anna is asking God questions that concern the kingdom, that are inquisitive questions about heaven, about earth, about God's presence among us, about God's power, and about things that absolutely boggle my mind.

They are questions that are beyond my wisdom to fully answer, and they are questions that are beyond the wisdom of anyone to fully answer. These are the pressing questions of her mind.

Sure, she is also learing about being kind and good to others. She often fails. She is selfish. She is fully human, but she is quickly learning how to treat others when she leaves her selfish ways behind.

But those issues of particular sins in her life are not the big perplexing questions in her life. Nope. Her questions have more substance, and she's only four.

I'm excited; I'm really excited because it seems that the kids in our midst are asking the more imporatant questions. Anna is asking questions about the fullness of the kingdom of God and we as adults are too often stuck on the legalistic crap that has very little to do with being Christ followers.

Out of the mouths of children - and it wasn't me who said it first either. :)