God wants us to know Him. He wants us to choose Him! It is for this reason that he reveals himself in all of His creation. Through its order and through its beauty, we see Him if we look. But what about in that which He didn’t create?
-Listen children. I want to tell you a story. In the beginning God created man. In His image and likeness, He created them.
-But who is He that we image?
-He is Trinity.
-And what does it mean to be like Him, what does He do?
-Well God the Father loves the Son. And God the Son loves the Father.
-And the Spirit?
-Ah, yes, The Spirit. He IS their love.
-And He created us to be like Him?
-Yes, the Father wants you to love the Son. And the Son wants you to love the Father
-And the Spirit?
-Ah yes, The Spirit. He wants to live in you as He lives in the Father and Son
-So what happened next after the beginning?
-Well the devil is a clever one and he figured something out. To be like God means to choose like God, and through his own personal experiment he realized this meant you could choose to NOT be like God. It’s the way choice works.
-I don’t like the devil
-That’s good, he’s not to be trusted. But like any good liar, he twists the truth. He told Adam and Eve to be like God all they had to do was choose to eat from the One tree God had forbidden.
-Why did God forbid that tree?
-That is a good question. But the answer to why God does anything is always the same. Because He loved them.
-Did they forget that?
-They must have because they believed the devil that it is choosing that makes us like God. But it’s not so much choosing, but what we choose that makes us like God. But they fell for it hook, line and sinker and the whole world fell with them.
-That is sad
-It is. Because all of creation was given for us to know and love God and with that first sin came suffering and death, the consequence of sin. And because it was released by man collaborating with the devil, He didn’t create it, so we couldn’t find Him there.
-And the devil had won?
-It appeared so. What was God to do? There was suffering and death all over his beautiful world, that stuff spreads like wild fire. But unlike fire, it spread darkness. No one could find Him in all that suffering, and He was not in the death that was now part of His creation. The devil had really put Him between a rock and a hard place: we needed choice to be like God. But to choose wrongly made it impossible for us to know and love Him through all that suffering and death.
-And?
-And what?
-That certainly can’t be the end
-Yes, you are a smart one. The devil is a clever one. But God, He is brilliance!
The Father said to The Son, “We can’t take their choice.”
“No,” The Son said, “that won’t work at all.”
“Most certainly it will not,” said The Spirit. “But we could take the consequences.”
“No,” said The Father, “that’s the same thing.”
“The way I see it,” said The Son, “the real problem is that in the consequences, they can’t see Us. We need to claim the consequences, not take them away.”
“That’s what I said,” quipped The Spirit.
“Yes, my Boy, that seems to hit the nail on the head.”
And with that word nail, the Son got very quiet, for they all saw exactly what must be done.
-What? What was to be done.
-The Son had to leave His Father and enter as a light into the world filled with the darkness of suffering and death. And while He lived, He spent every moment of His earthly life choosing to love His Father as He had always done. But, He chose to suffer the consequences of not choosing God anyway.
-He suffered?
-Yes, he suffered and he suffered and he suffered and then He died. Don’t cry. He wanted to do it.
-Why?
-Now that is a good question. But the answer to why God does anything is always the same.
-Because He loves us. Yes, yes. I forgot that but remember now.
-And on the third day, when His friends went to find His dead body it was gone.
-What? Gone?
-Yep. He is alive! He had conquered death, the devil’s greatest victory. Now in death itself, we find God!
-Hooray! But not the suffering, how did He conquer that part?
-Well, He couldn’t take it away, right?
-No, that’d be the same as taking away the choice that lets us be like God
-You are exactly right. He didn’t take it away, He entered it so that in suffering, we can find Him.
-Because that was the problem all along. He wasn’t in the suffering or death, but now He IS!
-That’s right, He IS, not was. From now until the end of time, in that very stuff, we find Him most. You are very good listeners.
-Well, it’s a good story.
-Yes, the greatest story ever told!
