St. Bonaventure
At that time Jesus said in reply, "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned You have revealed them to the childlike." Matthew 11:25
My oldest daughter is 7 years old. Right before she goes to bed each night, we have started praying for her guardian angel to be with her to ward off bad thoughts and nightmares. We pray that he (or she) help her to think of all the good things God blesses us with. Well, last night after we did that, she had some questions for me. She said, "Mom, God can't be with me all the time to make sure I don't have a bad dream." I said, "Yes He can honey." She says, "How can he be in all these different places all the time?" I told her that He's not like a person, He's a being and He can be wherever He wants to be in as many different places. And He uses our guardian angels to help protect and guide us. She looked at me kind of funny and still didn't understand. I told her that we don't have to understand God, just believe in Him and trust Him. She said OK, gave me a hug and went off to go to sleep.
I'm not sure that she trusted me with this conversation. She was trying to use her mind to understand how God could help her, when really, it's our trust and love we have in our hearts for Him and our complete faith that gives us the understanding we need. So often we use our intellect to try to understand God. Good luck with that. Our measly human minds can't even begin to comprehend the kind of being God is and understand everything about Him. Being childlike is having a simple, innocent trust in God without all the intellectual thinking. It's not our job to try to understand Him.
Sometimes when we try to make sense of God with our minds, it leads us down a path of selfishness and disbelief, such as the scribes and the Pharisees. The reasoning and intellect we have here in this world, here on Earth, is not what gets us into Heaven. It's the childlike, undying belief we should have in God.
Lord, I want to love you completely with all my heart. Please send my guardian angel to protect me against the thoughts of disbelief.
Daily Readings:
Exodus 3:1-6, 9-12 Psalms 103:1-4, 6-7 Matthew 11:25-27
2 comments:
That was so beautiful, how you phrased this for her.
I hope I can remember it when I need to.
God Bless
It was an awesome conversation. I love talking about God with my kids! Last night I had to take them to Church with me for confession and my daughter and son sat in the pew doing their rosary while I took the little one in with me. My son wasn't the best behaved, but aside from that, we had another good conversation in the van on the ride home. My son ended up praying for me to keep the devil out. Isn't that the sweetest?!
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