A Child's Thoughts On God

I recently started going to a creative writing group to hone what little I have to start off with. Anyway this was an essay that I started in the group during our 20 minute writing time and have since completed:

I look at him. He’s strong. I remember how he would lift me up high into the sky as if I weighed no more than a thought. Lighter than snow, as inconsequential as the sun on my face.

I look at him. His strength is matched only by his understanding of the world. Not just any world. My world. I had questions. He had answers. Sometimes I would sit and try to think of a question that would contend with his knowledge of the universe. “Why is the grass green?” I would ask. “Why is the sky blue?” “Why do animals have fur?” “Why are you bigger than me?”

I think sometimes he would act like the question really challenged him. As if to say “That’s a really good question. You’re very smart for thinking of that.” But nothing really ever stumped him. By the time that big light in that even bigger expanse disappeared on another long, endless day of my youth's making he would have found an answer to the most challenging & profound questions I could conjure. And with a strong hand on my shoulder and the knowledge of the universe burning bright behind his big blue eyes he would set the world back into the embrace of a child’s understanding.

Until I thought of more questions to ask. “Why are clouds white?” “How do my legs work?” “Why do I sneeze?”

You see this man was my dad...as if you didn’t know that already. The beginning & ending of my existence. The one-stop-shop for all things, both questions and concerns. My fears & my hopes found their resolution in this hairy mountain of a man I called “Daddy”.

But over time my questions slowly changed. “Why do people die?”, “Why do we need forgiveness?”, “Why do we go to church?”

All of which he was prepared to answer. But my questions demanded more thought if one was going to attempt answering them.

Time made it’s cyclical way around my existence and at some point in it’s inevitably dictated events I found myself asking a different set of questions. Instead of “why do people die?” I was asking “why did my mother die?”, or “why did my friend have to die?”. Questions like “does God really love me?” and “who am I to an all-powerful all-knowing God?”. Questions that required deeper answers than what words pouring off peoples tongues could provide. Yes even the answers that issued from my father’s mouth could not satisfied the insatiable hunger of this man-child’s questioning.

Yet sometimes on those celestially planned days by someone bigger than me I find myself asking those funny child-questions again: “Why is the sky so big?” “Why are mountains so tall?” “Why does blood course through my veins?”.

I guess things don’t change all too much over time. I still have questions. But I also have a better understanding of what kind of answers I’m looking for...

...and only one can give me those kind of answers.