Theological Perspectives

“MOM! MOM!”

Here we go again, I thought to myself. I waited for him to come find me in Oxbear’s office.

“Mom! Can you come butter the toast for me, please?”

“Can’t you butter the toast yourself, son?”

“I don’t how to butter the toast goodly though, Mom. Please?”

This kid has clearly been taking lessons from his Uncle Francis.

Plans were in the books for Puck to meet with the session after church that morning regarding church membership. He was more enthusiastic about it than I would have been at eight years old.

“I can’t wait to meet with the session!” he announced with gusto as we approached church.

After the service I saw him with his buddies stuffing his face with a stack of three chocolate chip cookies. Sustenance for all that intense cross-questioning. Turns out the cookies were hardly necessary; a reschedule was required.

Back at the Big House for St. Patrick’s Day feast number two – after Rose had gifted Puck a t-shirt that read: “Irish I Had Pizza” – Elmer and Jaya described their adventures leading children’s church or “Kinder Kirkin” that morning during the service.

“It was all about Cain murdering Abel,” Elmer explained.

“Teaches kids about how not to be vegetarians,” Rose suggested.

Later, Rose and I laughed over the Christian Mother Goose book that Mom found to read to Yali.

“This just doesn’t work,” Rose said, listening to the Christianized version of Little Bo Peep. “It’d be better if they wrote about Jesus rounding the sheep up and bringing them back, because they can’t find their way home. This is theologically inaccurate.”

Last night, Puck and I talked through the first half of Genesis 1 together.

“What do you think it means when God separated the day from the night?” I asked. “How could anyone tell the difference between day and night before the sun and moon and stars were created?”

Puck had an answer ready to go. “I think it means that the day was when God’s glory was there. Or maybe… maybe the day was when there were hundreds of angels there, and then they just walked away for it to be the night.”