zwei

whew...being a parent is tiring enough. putting graduate work on top of that makes it exhausting. but then i also ended up leading high school youth group this morning. i'm ready to crash. greta hasn't freaked out yet and usually the second day is the worst, so perhaps we're getting out of the "i want mommy!" woods. the message this morning was so powerful that i didn't want it to end. i didn't want to leave church. i wanted to just stay there in the sanctuary quietly listening and meditating on the words. being in lent, we focused a lot on the cost of sin. our passage was from Gen. 6 where God says that he is sorry he made humans. we talked what that might mean for the God of the Universe to feel the kind of anguish that leads to regret and sorrow. the easy earthly comparisons are those of rebellious children and their loving and injured parents. if there is one thing that can bring sin into full, stark relief it is that comparison. one might be able to remain aloof from God--we just don't know what it means for God to feel something that we associate with weakness. but it's tough for you to shrug off the emotional pain that you cause your own parents, especially if they've sacrificed themselves for you over and over again. if greta turned out to be as hard-headed and -hearted as b and i were at different times in our lives...well, it's hard for me to think about it right now but it makes more sense to me than it used to that God can teach you things through children that you can't learn any other way.