Noah

A friend relayed the following Heart-thumping-What-should-I-say-Yikes-I’m-stumped-Situation:

She was reading to her preschoolers the story of Noah’s Ark and they asked her:

Where did all of the other people go?

(Meaning: those who weren’t on the ark.)

This mom wondered: How should I answer!??
(While thoughts swirled in her head: what if my reply causes my kids to become fearful of rain storms!)

Hmmmm… There is always the response of answering a question with a question:

Where do you suppose they went?

Would that work in this situation?
How would you have answered this question?

Would you have explained that…

• The people were very bad. (And left it at that.)
• Or…The people were very bad and as punishment it rained and rained. It rained so hard there was a flood. (And left it at that.) Or
• Or would you have gotten more specific and said… The people were very bad; they were so bad that God decided to wipe them all out and so he created a flood.

I think that I would have liked to add a couple of questions to this conversation:

Do you suppose that all of that rain was really rain or was it God’s tears?
Why do you suppose God was crying?
Do you suppose this story is meant to teach us to obey God?

You know your kids best. What would you have answered? (Please share your answers!)

Photo credit: Josh Madison
Licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0