children – Hope Walking

Where is Heaven?

You’ve probably prayed these words thousands of times, “Our Father who art in Heaven.” Where do you imagine Heaven is?

We throw the word heaven around a lot in our modern culture, naming ice cream, pizza parlors and ski resorts after it. Folks often say, “I was in heaven when ……” I doubt they mean anything close to what the followers of Jesus thought when he taught them to pray.

First century people had a simple understanding of heaven and earth. Earth was where they lived, walked, grew crops and buried their dead. Heaven was everything above earth, and who knew what all lived there? They easily perceived that powers and forces out of their control lived in the heavens. Thunder, lightening, hail storms and whirl winds, they thought, were the work of spirits, or gods, who had to be appeased or placated.

We have left behind the idea that Baal is hurling lightening at us, but the heavens are still very much mysterious to us. And somethings, like the recent polar vortex that froze all of Texas, remind us that we are not in control either.

Neither do we know very much about what is beyond earth. For the first time today NASA released a recording of wind on the planet Mars. Getting that sound recording was very impressive. But Mars is not far at all compared to what is out there. Take a look for yourselves on an imaginary trip through the heavens by clicking here.

If the heavens are of such magnitude that we cannot even imagine how big they are, did Jesus want us to imagine God is out there, somewhere, distant and unseen? Absolutely not!

If you were a Jew listening to Jesus teach you might have thought of God as the one who came down with thunder and lightening to give Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai. If you were a pagan listening to Jesus, you would have believed a multitude of gods and goddesses lived above the clouds, and, being afraid of them, you would have build altars and offered gifts to make them favor you. Either way you would not have been relaxed to be in the presence of Heaven.

And then Jesus spoke:

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven’

“I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

So, next time you look up at the sunny sky or peer out into the sparkling stars say this to yourself, “Wow! My Father made all that. And he’s bigger than all that. But he told me he knows me and cares about me. How awesome is that!”

Matthew 6:8-9, 25-26,7:7-11(ESV)

Greta Thunberg’s image on the cover of Time Magazine is soft and lovely. She is Time’s 2019 Person of the Year. But that image is not the one we tend to recall when we hear her name. The lasting image of adolescent Greta is her angry-to-the-point-of-tears face twisted with anguish and frustration.

“How dare you!” she roared at the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit in September, blaming every adult who ever turned over the ignition in their car. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

What comes to mind is Dr. Suess’s green Grinch going through Whoville greedily taking everything that was there to make children like Greta happy and healthy. Is that what we did?

Let’s put aside the debate on fossil fuels and ask, “Are we the grinches that took the carefree bliss of childhood from Greta?” I don’t think so.

The true story of Greta’s rise to fame on the world scene is not the one we have been told. But what I need to point out here is that Time Magazine’s article about Greta tells us she was a severely depressed 11-year old who almost totally stopped speaking and eating because she was so sad about the world being threatened by climate change. It’s heartbreaking that any 11-year old would feel so hopeless.

Which brings me to a very interesting recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Erica Komisar, a child and family therapist. The title of the article was “Don’t Believe in God? Lie to Your Children.” Komisar makes the case that the rise of depression and anxiety among children and adolescents is caused by a declining interest in religion: “Nihilism is fertilizer for anxiety and depression…… The belief in God — in a protective and guiding figure to rely on when times are tough — is one of the best kinds of support for kids in an increasingly pessimistic world.”

The Grinch that stole Greta’s childhood was atheist, materialist, nihilistic thinking. You’re a mean one Mr. Nietzsche.

According to Time, Greta was eight when she first heard of catastrophic global climate change but assumed adults, “the politicians,” would take care of it. However, by age eleven she realized no one was taking charge and she became deeply depressed. Her elders could not offer her any hope. “The buck stopped,” and no one was there.

But Someone is there! All we know about the earth and the universe points to a designer. Science reveals an amazingly fine-tuned universe that perfectly supports life on earth. Exploration into our cells reveals stunning machines and systems that give us life. Just look around at the earth and up at heavens and see beauty and purpose from a creator who cares about us.

We need to wisely care for our world, but we don’t need to panic. The Creator cares so deeply about us that he stepped into a human body and lived with us. Jesus promises never to stop caring for us.

I would like to spend a day with Greta, or with any child frightened by climate doom. I would show her all the ways God designed her and her world for life and for love. I would invite her to trust and love her creator back.

And I would end the day sitting around a campfire singing “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.”

For indeed He does.

Tag: children

Father In Heaven

Who Grinched Greta?