"Daddy", my four year old son looked up into my eyes as he asked me one night as we were finishing story time, "Why did God let Guh Guh (Four year old for Grandma) have cancer in her body if He loves her?"
He then slipped into his nightly routine of saying his prayers and in those prayers began to ask God to take the cancer away from his Guh Guh.
I shut his bedroom door door behind me as i slipped into a quiet hallway and asked my Father a question nearly as difficult as the question that my son had asked of me.
"Father, how do I explain to my son, why you allow the things that you allow into our life?"
More specifically, "Father, how do i explain to Clark that you do love his grandma and that you loved her so much you allowed this into her life?"
How do you explain to a child or an adult for that matter a clear answer to the question, "Why God, Why?"
There are some who read this that are more mature in their Faith than I was and would say, "Dan, you have NO right to question God!!!"
Maybe not, but I did question.
This was a big blow to our close knit family, and the road through all of this for everyone was just in it's beggining stage.
Walls
They intrude into our normal routines and they have a tendency to bring the status quo activities of life to a screeching halt.
The Father did what the Father does anytime we go to Him for instruction. He instructed.
The Father gave me the idea of putting together a short story in the simplicity of a child like "Stick man" drawing that would bring a complex truth to a child level.
The idea was turned into a children's book called, The Man and The Wall.
That book was used in countless counseling sessions a speople were introduced to a different way of looking at the walls that God allowed into their life. The book developed into a weekly blog that was started this past January and has been read in over 60 countries and had over 13,000 views. The e-mails have started rolling in and facebook messages from people that God is teaching through it and the ways that Father is choosing to use it blows me away!
This book was put into a short video that has been viewed now everywhere that the blog has been viewed and where this simple message is headed is absolutely beyond my capability of understanding.
The wall became something that magnifies The Creator and He is seen, not as some distant God who inflicts punishment and pain, but rather as a close friend who uses these walls to inrtoduce us to a better view of Him!
My life verse is:
"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." ~Proverbs 3:5-6
Father used this wall to open my eyes to the power of this passage. "In all thy ways (The things I do, the places I go, and the people that I meet) Acknowledge (Search for or discover) Him (God) and He (God) will direct (Lead or control) my path (Way of life or journey).
This is a wall near where I work. Someone came by and looked at this wall and left marks that detracted and discouraged people driving by. It had become a sign that the neighborhood was in decline and quite honestly it was depressing to see every day.
Then someone else came to the same wall and saw something more than just a wall. They saw an opportunity to express a creator. They took the same wall and decided to reflect something greater than themselves or even the wall itself. They took a brush and some paint and transformed the wall into a message of beauty to everyone that passed by it.
I have no idea who the person is that did it, and really isn't that the point of it all? It isn't about us but rather it's about Him!
The purpose of this blog is to help people see the walls in their lives as a choice and an opportunity.
The wall either becomes a depressing reality of a circumstance that we did not ask for or want, or it becomes a powerful opportunity to express The Creator and we see it for what it always was...an invitation to know more of Him in us!
What is the wall that you have on your path?
It is your choice what you do with it!
Climbing with you,
~Dan
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