All In A Day's Work

You, little soul, are a walking dichotomy. On the other side of your video games and noisemaking and virtual reality is a ten-year old philosopher and a theologian whose God has been warped by a family who has it all wrong. You're asking existential questions and stunning me with your profundity as we sit on beanbag chairs side by side, our voices the only sound breaking the silence in the room.

You've learned of God the Judge, the One Who knows all you've done wrong.

As you told me of your dreams where you can feel pain, the ones that keep you awake at night out of fear, the ones about hell and the devils that scratch you over and over and over, I talk with you about the God of love.

This God knows when sparrows fall and how many hairs are on your head.

You told me that now I know your one wish--to dig a hole to the center of the earth and kill the devil.

"I know we're supposed to forgive," you say, "but there's one person I can't forgive. The devil. He could choose not to torture us, but he does anyhow."

I told you to talk to God when the dark invades your dreams. I stroked your hair and said you could eat lunch with me.

And in the end, you struggled to express to me what life is: "Life...well, life...it's thousands of souls."

You're right. It is.

Yours is one of them, and it is precious, and it is close to the heart of God.