What have the past six months been like for you? For Bill and me, it was like jumping into the deep end of the pool.

There were dream-come-true travels mixed with incredible hards. There were times of pouring out my heart to God; and times of bending my ear to listen for His voice. But for sure, it has not been the summer we expected, nor the summer Bill and I planned.

In the midst of our deep-end summer, questions proliferated. From the pre-schoolers to the nonagenarians, we were all in the deep end. God allowed us to learn from the questions of a child, our precious GRAND, Ezra.

Ezra’s maternal grandpa died in a small plane crash in June. I love Ezra’s expression as he asks his questions and listens trustingly for the answers.

Ezra bravely voiced his questions.
His questions were to understand, not challenge.
His questions were accepting of his now reality.
His questions were child-like.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.”
I Corinthians 13:11

Ezra modeled child-like deep-end questions and trusted the wisdom of his Grandpa Tell and the other adults surrounding him.

But describing us older ones, “For now we see in a mirror dimly … Now I know in part;”
I Corinthians 13:12

We adults don’t like the dim mirror and the partial knowledge. We go to the hard questions, the why questions wanting to make sense of the deep end.

RC Sproul once posed this rhetorical question:

Do you think you know better than God
what love looks like?

Of course not! God is love and loving is living out of his character, I say.

“And every fear shatters, breaks away,
when it turns to face the relentless, abundant love
that will not be stopped by anything.”
Ann Voskamp, The Way of Abundance

But sometimes my deep-end, unspoken questions challenge my spoken words.

Resting in the truth of I Corinthians 13:13 helps me to breathe in the deep end. “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

What about you?
What helps you believe God’s definition of love when you find yourself in the deep end?

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Romans 8:16

I want my default to be becoming who I am: God’s child!

 

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