Jesus and Mary

My younger daughter is standing over my shoulder as I write this. I asked her for an idea to write about this morning. She suggested that I write about the relationship between Jesus and his mother Mary.

I asked her to tell me about Mary. She tells me that Mary was a nice girl, which we know is true because the Bible says she found favor with God. My daughter can relate to who Mary is because she knows that Mary was a daughter, too!! She didn't know that Mary was probably the age of our eldest son when the angel came to visit. She tells me that she thought Mary was older...fifteen or so.

According to my daughter, she had baby Jesus. I asked her how that happened, and she said that God decided, because Mary was nice, to give her baby Jesus (again, corroborated with Scripture because she found favor with God). And when he was born, Mary took care of him.

My older daughter is reminding us of Joseph, Jesus's earthly father...actually a step father, like I am to our eldest son. The girls understand this to a certain degree, but it is a little confusing, too. My elder daughter tells me that before the angel came to Mary, Joseph and Mary were planning to get married. (Both girls giggle at the tongue-twisting of talking about Mary marrying or Mary getting married.)

We read Luke 1 together, the section about the angel coming to Mary. We discussed the meaning of the various terms. And I asked them if they could think of anything that it was impossible for God to do. I told them about the irresistable force and immovable object paradox, and told them that it was just a word game to think about things that are impossible for God.

I told them that we shouldn't care about those kinds of word games, and then asked them what God really cared about. They answered, in unison, that God cares about us. The youngest is saying, as she reads me writing this, "Well, yeah!! He ALWAYS cares about us!" She also believes that God loves all of his creation and that God still loves Satan.

I asked them if Satan could be saved, and they answered no...that he is too mean. I empathize with that answer, but it makes you wonder why God is so patient with Satan, doesn't it?

They've now lost their focus on this and both have wandered off. During the time we talked, I also showed them some things about using the keyboard, and they told me their favorite ways for erasing mistakes. The elder will use the mouse to highlight and delete. The younger uses the backspace key.

I told them about typewriters and the eldest asked how we "deleted" mistakes with typewriters. I told them about White Out and then the IBM Selectric correction features--first the strike-over tape and then the lift-off tape. That led to talking about my two years repairing Selectric typewriters in the 1983-1985 timeframe...first in the San Bernardino area and then in College Station as I finished my Bachelor's degree.

It was fun to share this with them this Saturday morning. It reminds me that in spite of my knowledge of the trouble and evil in the world, that there are still innocents. Praise God for continually giving us innocence--in the form of children--to enjoy and to learn from!!