Wearily upward

There was a famous Afrikaans author who wrote: " 'n Halwe begryper het 'n goeie woord nodig. " It means that someone who only partially understands something needs a clear, encouraging, or well-chosen explanation to grasp it fully. He wrote this as a tongue-in-cheek play on a well-known Afrikaans saying that goes: " 'n Goeie begrip het 'n halwe woord nodig, " which means that someone who has good understanding only needs half an explanation to get the message. Which one of these describe God best? Does he understand our prayers easily and quickly, or does he need detailed, well-worded, explanatory prayers to understand our needs and desires? My first thought was that he is able to understand us and our needs easily and quickly; sometimes even without the need for words or even knowing exactly what we want in the first place (Isaiah 65:24; Matthew 6:32; Romans 8:26-27). He is, after all, God: the Creator of all living things (Colossians 1:16), the On...

I was looking at some old photos and videos on my laptop recently, and came across a video of my mum reading to my 1.5 year-old son on a visit to South Africa in 2019. It was heartwarming to see how comfortable and content he was simply sitting next to my mum as she explained many of the pictures he was trying to make sense. Both our kids still love reading and being read to. Now they're older, bedtime picture books have been replaced by longer reads like The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf (an excellent book!),  The Usborne Book of Stars and Planets or Asterix & Obelix . They don't fully grasp every concept in those books yet, so there are often a lot of questions about why what Obelix said was funny, how we got the Mars Rover to Mars, or why bullies of all ages can be so mean to those less fortunate. And I absolutely love those questions and the inevitable discussions that follow! My son sometimes asks my daughter for help explaining something, and she will...