Day 32 Questions

 This morning as Eva and I ran errands she asked me, 'Mom, what is the meaning of life?' She's 7. But not the norm. Most of my teenagers don't hit that question until I teach them Godot. And even then for some the existential search for meaning isn't as important as the staring line up for the first rugby team.

But here we are, parked outside the gluten free bakery, pondering the meaning of life. 

Needless to say all my answers were, to quote Eva, 'the K word'. Kak. My children must never use this abbreviation out of context. Lots of things are 'the k word'. Like Eva's bike that she's grown out of, that doesnt even have gears. And last night our Springboks were 'the k word.' Playing our B team against the Aussies led Gray to seek me out in the kitchen multiple times during the game, in tears, because our team was 'K'. 

I digress. I didn't have a suitable answer for Eva. She did throw in reincarnation and atheism and the soul. She also wanted to know who made God. And how old the universe was. It was all a bit overwhelming. By the time we got home she just shoveled her shopping bag full of note pads and pencils onto the tar and lay spread eagle on the ground demanding that I tell her who God's father is. 

It's when we start to try and answer the big questions to a newly hatched brain that we realise how insignificant we are. We realise that the things we think are important, primarily money, really don't exist in the bigger scheme of things. When you're explaining to a 7 year old that she is made of star dust, created at the dawn of time, with a soul that was made for a world that currently exists on another time space continuim, and that our ultimate destiny and desire is to have a soul worthy of the next world, that the trivialities of this world get very small. 

That's not to say that having no money is fine, and that depression doesn't exist and that many people get so tired of grappling with the question that they end their lives to try and silence the doubt. Life is so very heavy, so 'k'. Because we were not designed for it. And the people who have acclimated best to it are the tyrants and the narcissists. They are of this world. 

So I pointed at the trees, newly green in Spring, and the miraculous ecosystems hatching out of the freshly rain watered ground in our garden.We looked at the flowers. The fact that life can regenerate and renew itself, that hope often lies in miniscule moments of creation, is perhaps part of the meaning we search for. Some Winters are longer and harder than others. For some it feels like the Winter never ends. And perhaps for some their Spring is waiting in the next world, not this one. But that's the point, if we believe in God and his creation we know that there is the promise of Spring. So perhaps the answer to it all is hope. Because God's creation, the reflection of his heart for his children, always promises us that 'k' Winter will come to an end. The star dust that we are made of is a prophesy that we will return to the universe that we belong to, and it is not this one.