When I was eight or nine, my family went to a cookout at some friends’ house down the road. Near their place was a pond the whole neighborhood shared. The adults stood around the grill talking. I drifted down to the water. Most of the kids there were older than me. I wasn’t close to any of them, and I wasn’t the popular one. At that age, all I wanted was for somebody to notice me.
So I found a big rock that hung out over the pond and appointed myself the evening’s entertainment. I jumped from that rock to the next one and back again, goofing around. I’d been told more than once to be careful and to stop. To a boy that age, a warning sounds a lot like a dare.
Eventually the pond settled the matter. I slipped and went in, and I came out the way you’d expect, soaked through, muddy, wearing a clump of algae, with a scraped knee to show for it.
The knee hurt, but the embarrassment was worse. It had been about as close to a perfect evening as you get. The sunset was beautiful, and everybody was in a good mood. Then the young kid who’d been told to stop went into the pond and took the whole evening in with him. At least that’s how it felt. I was sure my parents would be angry, and I figured they had every right to be.
My mom and dad came over and wrapped their arms around me, pond water and all. Nobody yelled. The first thing they wanted to know was whether I was okay. Somehow they understood what was going on underneath. I was the young one, without a close friend in the bunch, wanting attention and having no idea how to get it. They had seen the whole thing, and they didn’t need the details. They asked anyway. “You’re all right,” they said. “Tell us what happened.”
These days I’m the parent, and I’ve asked my own kids the same question more times than I can count. God has been asking it a lot longer. All through the Bible, he asks his children things he already knows.
A God who asks
The first question God asks in the Bible comes right after the first sin, and it’s an easy one. Adam and Eve had eaten the one fruit they were told to leave alone, sewn themselves aprons out of fig leaves and hidden in the trees, as if the God who planted the garden might not know his way around it. God called out, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9).
Thanks for reading this far. If it’s been worth your time, I’d be grateful if you’d subscribe and read the rest. Your support keeps this writing going and helps Shield Bearer Counseling Centers, the Christian nonprofit I lead in the Houston area. With your help, when someone reaches out for help, we can always answer and never have to turn anyone away.