At five years old, curiosity and naiveté are still part of
the genuine innocence that accompanies childhood. Just ask Elizabeth.
Some things in life are just given.
Her small mind doesn’t understand how children in Africa
can be without mommies or daddies. “Who
makes the kids dinner?” she asks as I explain the hopeless condition of many
orphans living in the third world. “And
how do they get to school?” she wonders.
Our discussion continues, as she tries to grapple with the
reality that some children face everyday- children like her. “But if they don’t have shoes,” she
rationalizes, “then their feet will be dirty.
And if they don’t have mommies, then they won’t get baths.” She pauses to pose a simple, yet unanswerable
question, “Why can’t they go to the store and buy shoes?” Feeble explanations leave Elizabeth thinking exactly how so many feel.
“It’s not fair,” she announces. I agree. Something’s not right. This broken
world has been maimed by sin. All of creation
knows it. All of humanity is waiting.
Romans 8:19-23
‘For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day
when God will reveal who his children really are.
Against its will, all creation was subjected
to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when
it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.
For we know that all
creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the
present time.
And
we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a
foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin
and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us
our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has
promised us.’
