Love Covers a Multitude: Even a multitude of questions

Every life cries out for significance...

There are so many questions that children ask.

"Are we there yet?"

"How much longer?"

"Where are we going?"

And I am sure everyone's favorite...

"WHY?"

Yet these are just the questions they ask out loud. For every question that is spoken, there are hundreds more unspoken, burning in a child's heart. These questions are at times buried under their pain and very rarely vibrate across vocal chords.

"Am I ugly?"

"Does anyone love me?"

"Why did God make me stupid?"

Recently, we have heard a few of those questions begin to translate from hurting hearts to our open ears. There is something significant that occurs in one's heart when a ten-year-old boy utters one of these phrases. You immediately hope that your words will speak louder than the voices speaking these lies. You quickly affirm and declare truth, and by repetition or volume, everything in you hopes that your message will erase the former. As the desire to remove the message wanes, you instantly want to wrap the child in your arms. I am not sure whether you are hoping it will help your words sink in or whether it will squeeze the old message out, but hold them you do. It's in those moments that I can feel that big smile from Heaven radiate upon my shoulders. In a single smile He can lift off my burdens and propel me to love beyond myself. He isn't asking me to fix it or follow the child around yelling truth at them until they believe it - He just asks me to love. Love beyond my strength, beyond my feelings, and beyond what I think is possible. The truth will only truly sink in when it has been soaked, saturated, and spoken in LOVE.

We still don't have all the answers to all their questions. We often call upon our army of college students for help with the hard homework questions, but what we do have is LOVE. In each moment, LOVE answers more than we could ever fathom.