This article is part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions series.
We Have Help to Wait
If Jesus promises to make everything right someday, why doesn’t he do it right now? This is a natural question children might have. If you’re a parent, you know that sometimes it’s hard for our kids to wait for good things. If your child wakes up and you say, Hey, tonight after dinner we’re going to get ice cream, they might very well ask, Well, why can’t we get it right now? It’s a natural question.
As adults, we know how much we want Jesus to come back and make things right. Our hearts ache for that, and it’s hard. But we are not God, and we do not know what he knows. What seems like God being slow to fulfill his promises to us is really God’s patience. And we have experienced God’s patience. God will always keep his promises.
In this poignant picture book, Jane faces challenges when her seemingly perfect life takes a difficult turn. With the help of her parents, she learns how to lament and make her pain known to God.
If we are in Christ and have been forgiven of our sins, then we are actually proof that God does keep his promises. And while we’re in the waiting, parents, we have the Holy Spirit to help us wait. He prays for us, he’s with us, and he can help us believe that God will keep his promises.
We can go to our children and say, We don’t know when Jesus is going to come back, but our God does what he says he will do. He promised to send a savior, and he did. He promises that he will make all things right, and he will.
Answering these questions for our kids can be hard, and it’s especially hard when the answer is that we don’t know. But we can encourage our children with the truth of God’s character and the hope in his word.
Alyson Punzi is the author of He Always Hears: A Story of Loss and the Hope of Things Made New.
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