Than's Questions

Than, our 3 year old, has entered the stereotypical question-asking stage. This, coupled with his repeat-myself-until-someone-acknowledges-me stage, has pushed me into patience. (Note: The road to patience passes through the land of impatience…) A couple of weeks back, we spent the entire week teaching and rehearsing proper protocols for how to be heard:

“Dad, excuse me.”

“Than, please don’t repeat yourself.”

“I’m not going to answer that question.”

In contrast, the extent of the 15 month old’s communication is, at best, grunts and, at worst, grunts degenerating into screaming and pounding fits. But Than is not only able to communicate, he’s entered the world of curiosity. This curiosity can often wear my nerves. But lately I’ve tried to press into the constant questions and welcome them. Though this can be hard in the midst of

“Why aren’t we going outside?” (X5)

“Why can’t we have yogurt for dinner?” (X8)

“Why don’t we push our brother?” (X4)

A few week's back, some friends tagged Terese and me in a facebook conversation. In the conversation, our friend was reminded about how passionate Terese and I are about recycling. The conversation aroused something dormant inside both of us: an excitement that ARKADELPHIA RECYCLES! After the conversation had steeped in our heads for a couple of days, a question distilled for each of us: “Are we still passionate about recycling? I know we used to be, but …”

I answered this question thus: while our passion has waned, our action has not. We still do all of the stuff to care for the environment that we used to. (Maybe a future post in this statement…) But we’re not in the same position of creating change in ourselves or others. Our passion is not dead, but hibernating.

The hibernating passion met Than’s consistent “Why?” around our dinner table. When they converged, we were reminded routine parts of life like are actually in answer to this question.  We wash diapers, sort our waste into one of three bins, purchase products based on (lack of) packaging, carry our re-usable bags into Target because we value something.

So, Why?

As Christians, we’re called to filter everything we do through the resurrection. Every spent dime and moment, every thrown piece of trash, every surfed web-page, every spoken word should be an implication of the resurrection. Everything we do should reflect the fact that the world and its inhabitants are broken, yet, amazingly, are being fixed. The resurrection of the God-man, Jesus, is the first grape on the vine––our lives in him are our life on the vine.

We take every action, think every thought, spend every dime because of something. Than is on to something: Why do we do A or B or XYZ? This is a question that we’ve got to ask ourselves––and it wouldn’t hurt to have it on a Than-like repeat in our brains.

If every action, thought, dime is a step, then this is a daunting journey. But it’s the journey of our lives, one in which we are given the Word to guide our steps and the Spirit light the way. We have a lifetime to walk in the way of the Lord. Our facebook conversation reminded us of this, too. To be honest, we no longer recycle out of principle but out of habit. By God’s grace, we have re-in-habit-ed our lives so that we don’t have to think about these things. As we are re-habit-uated, we are freed to take other steps…now I’ve been lead to focus on parenting as the Father has parented me and Than is learning the habits of politeness.

Let’s listen to the Spirit as he continually confronts us with the question, “Why…?” Let’s follow him as he leads us to re-in-habit our lives––which is actually His resurrection life.