I wrote this in the wee hours of the morning, recorded it, edited it and am putting it up before it airs this week on the radio. In light of the recent tragedy in Afghanistan and the understandable fear and outrage among adults, kids are often left not knowing how to handle the emotions that we as adults often aren’t handling well either. All around us we see adults getting angry and attacking the wrong people when they feel out of control, but what power do kids have to change anything? Plenty! We’re going to talk about what it means to have God’s phone number and our obligation to mention those who are suffering even when we can’t do anything concrete to help them when they need help right now. Kids need to know that when they pray, God always hears them and acts even when we can’t see the results, and we are also going to discuss what Jesus had to say about these kinds of events.
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Good morning. I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids which is going to be very different this week. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
This week has been very scary in the news and, in fact, the last year and a half has been really scary for you guys, I imagine. And when people are scared and confused, adults get really angry and sometimes it is easier for them to be angry and to talk about what’s going on in scary ways than to talk about how they are really feeling. And that’s very normal, and you will find that in your life that will happen to you too. You will be overwhelmed and confused and scared and if you don’t talk about it, then you will get angry. Now, sometimes we should get angry. When we see people actually being hurt, we should get angry. When people are in trouble and they aren’t being helped, that should make us angry too. But, we always have to be careful about who we get angry at and what we get angry about or we might find ourselves doing wrong things and hurting people who have nothing to do with the problems.
Last week, a dad picking up his child from school was so angry about something that he beat the teacher up and the teacher had to go to the hospital because he didn’t like that his daughter had to wear a mask at school. Now, what the dad was angry about wasn’t anything the teacher did or had any control over, the dad was just angry. About a month ago, a grandma who works at the same store as my son asked a man to show his membership card at the door and the man yelled and screamed at her until she started crying. It wasn’t her fault that they had to show their cards and it was a normal thing to do but he was angry and so he was mean to her. This happens because sometimes adults don’t know how to handle their emotions and they felt like they were being picked on. No one had hurt these men, but they were hurtful to people who hadn’t done anything wrong because they didn’t like the way things were being done. And the people they hurt were just doing their jobs and not hurting anyone. Now these things don’t happen all the time. I bet you haven’t seen anyone do anything like this. I sure hope not. And probably you won’t see anyone do something like this either. Most people know not to hurt others when they are frustrated or angry. In these cases, nothing was really wrong but people just got angry and they didn’t remember to love their neighbors—and as Jesus tells us, everyone is out neighbor!
Now, this week something terrible happened in the news and maybe you have heard about it and maybe your parents are upset and angry. I have been very, very upset and sad about it and I have been praying a lot. I have also been crying. Right now, I am too sad and worried to be angry. Maybe I will be angry later, I don’t know. In a country called Afghanistan, on the continent of Asia, a terrible group took power of the government very suddenly. They used to be in power a long time ago, and when they were it wasn’t safe to be a Christian or to be a woman. Girls couldn’t go to school and learn, and women can’t leave their homes unless they are dressed a certain way and are with a man who is a relative. They can’t have jobs. If they go outside when they are not allowed to, they go to jail. And no one is allowed to believe in Jesus as their Savior. And the very terrible thing is that this kind of government will kill people who love Jesus. And so, grownups are very scared for them right now. I am very scared for them right now. And maybe you are scared from watching them be scared but don’t know how to talk to them about it but we’re going to talk about it today and discuss that it is okay to be scared. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you are scared and angry. It is normal. It would be totally weird if people were never ever scared!
Did you know that God made our emotions for our good? Now, that doesn’t mean that everything we do with our emotions is good. You know that. Hitting people and yelling isn’t the right thing to do and being a kid is all about learning that. We learn to control our actions but controlling our emotions is something else entirely. We can’t totally do that. Even soldiers get scared. Even police and firefighters get scared! And that might surprise you but being scared is a healthy emotion sometimes. Being scared can keep us from doing dangerous things. Being scared can warn us not to do something that we shouldn’t do. Sometimes we are scared of things that aren’t familiar to us but once we try them, we realize that it’s okay—like swimming or riding a two-wheeler. Those can be pretty scary things because we are afraid of getting water up our noses or falling off the bike and scraping our knees. It’s normal to be nervous when we first do those things but then we usually find that we enjoy riding our bikes once we get the hang of it and almost never fall off. And once we learn to swim and breathe right, we don’t think about snorting water into our brains—which actually doesn’t happen even if that is what it feels like.
But when bad things happen on the news, it’s different. Those things can seem very close even when they are far away. They can seem like it can happen to us when it probably never will. Sometimes we can see those things or hear the grownups talking about them and we wonder if it will ever happen to us. Sometimes, we can even have bad dreams about it. Sometimes, we wonder if the world is coming to an end but I want to tell you what Jesus said about these things of things before I talk to you about what you can do and what you can do is very powerful and very important. What you can do even means that you don’t have to be worried and scared the way most people in the world get worried and scared.
Right before he died, Jesus had been telling His disciples the worst things they had ever heard in their lives and they were scared. First of all, He kept telling them that He was going to die and they weren’t happy about that. They wanted only good things to happen, of course, because we all want that. They wanted easy lives. And they had thought they would be important people, generals and rulers when Jesus did what everyone knew a Messiah should do—defeat all of their enemies and make them an important Kingdom again. They wanted those Romans gone, and dead. They wanted the Romans to come bowing and scraping before them for a change. That sounded pretty great after all these years of bowing and scraping before the Romans and many Jewish people were slaves throughout the Roman Empire and many others were very poor.
But that isn’t all He told them. He also told them that the beautiful Temple they loved would be destroyed and not one stone would be left standing on another. Imagine if someone said that about your church or your own home, how upset you would be! Well, however bad you would feel, it was worse than that. Nothing was more important to Jewish life than the Temple. It was where they celebrated all the festivals that God commanded. It was the best place on earth as far as they were all concerned. Jesus and His disciples went there and taught whenever they were in Jerusalem, and celebrated the festivals. They had been doing that since they were all children. And it was the most beautiful building on earth, built on top of Mt Zion overlooking the city of Jerusalem. But the Temple had become a corrupt place and the very top priests, not the normal priests, were very wicked men. It wasn’t a place where God wanted to be worshiped anymore, even though He told them to build it in the first place because He wanted to be with His people.
When the disciples heard this, they must have been shocked and even scared and maybe even angry. They asked when all this would happen and what would be the warning signs that it was about to happen. And Jesus told them something very, very important that is also important for you to know. He told them that there would be all sorts of natural disasters like earthquakes, and wars, and scary news stories, but that that sort of thing was normal and not a warning sign that anything was about to happen. Jesus told them that there will always be bad people in the world doing bad things to someone. Jesus told them that there would always be things like earthquakes and volcanoes and drought—that’s when there is no rain—and hurricanes and tornadoes and forest fires but that those things don’t mean anything. That’s the way the world has always been and always will be. Did you know that I live very close to one of the biggest underground volcanoes in the world? The Yellowstone caldera. It’s ginormous and we get tiny little earthquakes all the time, every day, that no one can feel and that’s been going on for thousands of years. That’s normal. And maybe you live in a place with hurricanes and tropical storms, and that’s normal and has always happened. Maybe you live where it floods a lot. Maybe you live in a place where you hear the tornado siren tested every Wednesday morning like I used to when we lived in the Midwest. Maybe you’ve felt big earthquakes like I did in 1989 when I lived in Northern California and it felt like the ground was rolling under me and the lights were swaying back and forth overhead. If you live in California or the Pacific Northwest, you know that forest fires happen here and there every single year and that they are normal. Those things have always happened and they always will but you aren’t scared because you know that. Just like I am not scared of living so close to Yellowstone and we like to go hiking there a lot because it is one of the most beautiful places in the world! That’s what Jesus was saying—those things happen but don’t freak out and think it’s the end of the world or something! Jesus knew that His disciples were very young, mostly teenagers and so they hadn’t lived through a lot of stuff yet and He had to give them some perspective.
Let’s talk about perspective. Perspective is a word that means the way we see things. And you can have a pessimistic perspective, where you see everything as something that is going to turn out just terrible and a big deal, or an optimistic perspective, where you see everything as something that will turn out just fine and be okay. Well, Jesus is telling His disciples not to do either of those things. He is saying that bad things will happen but it doesn’t mean anything and it certainly doesn’t mean that everything is terrible. It also doesn’t mean that the world is about to end because these things have always happened. Usually when grownups talk about having perspective, that’s what they are talking about—having enough life experiences that you have seen a lot of things and you realize that what seemed like a big deal when they were younger actually is just how the world has always been. But, when something bad happens to us it is hard to remember that! But, we have to remember that bad things are always happening to someone, even when our lives are going great. And to them, it seems like the end of the world too. As we get older, we learn to expect that life is just complicated. But that doesn’t mean that we still don’t get sad, and scared, and angry when it does.
And so right now, we are seeing something that Jesus said was normal and not a sign of anything—wars and scary news stories. Only, He said wars and rumors of wars but rumors of wars was their way of talking about how they got the news in those days when there were no newspapers, radios, television sets, or computers or smart phones. A hundred and fifty years ago, they only had newspapers! So now, we get news all the time and so it seems like more is going on now but the truth is that we just know about more stuff that was always happening. So, even though it seems like there is more reason to be scared, the truth is that nothing has really changed and all of the scary stuff that no one used to know anything about is just in our faces all day and it really stresses grown-ups out. And because of that, maybe you are stressed out too but Jesus had something very important to say about that—a message for you the same as a message for His disciples.
He told them that they had jobs to do, taking His teachings and His message and His Gospel to the ends of the earth. And that they wouldn’t be able to do that if they were always busy being upset about all of the earthquakes and famine (which is what happens when there is no rain and you have no sprinklers), and wars and scary stories. He told them that if they got distracted by all this stuff that seemed horrible but was actually normal, that they wouldn’t be able to do the jobs He was giving them. “This stuff will happen,” Jesus said, “but it has always happened and it isn’t a sign of anything. You go out and preach my Gospel everywhere and to everyone. And I will be with you when bad things happen. My Spirit will be with you if you get arrested and I will tell you what you do and say. You aren’t alone and so you don’t need to worry about what other people worry about.” In fact, He told them not to worry until they actually saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies. And that’s pretty obviously a time to be worried, but they were supposed to be long gone by the time that happened.
Sometimes we get worried way too soon and we see a bad guy behind every tree and even when there is no one there! It’s easy to get scared when we aren’t remembering what Jesus told His disciples. It’s easy to forget that some things are just normal but because we are Christians, we are supposed to see the world differently. We get to see the world differently because we get to pray and maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal but it really is a big deal. Because we know Jesus and He knows us, it means that God sees us and hears us when we pray. We don’t have to worry that He has forgotten us or is ignoring us. How would you live differently if you personally knew the King of the world and had his phone number? And you knew that He loves you? Would you be more worried or would you be less worried? I bet you would be pretty confidant and that you wouldn’t be as scared and distracted by all of these things. I bet that even though you would still be worried and scared and angry that you wouldn’t be as worried, scared and angry as the people who didn’t have his phone number.
Knowing Jesus and being loyal to Him as our Savior and King means that we have God’s phone number. And it means that He hears our calls even if we don’t always hear His responses. He knows us and He knows what we are going through. Sometimes we grown ups get so distracted and scared that we forget that. And we go to each other and we talk and yell and we forget to pray. That’s normal too. It shouldn’t be, but it is. We like to yell at someone who will yell back so we can feel like we are accomplishing something—but we’re kind of silly that way and I admit that I do it too! But then, we realize that yelling won’t help and and especially when the problem isn’t one that we can do anything about because we are far away, or we don’t have any power to change it, and it is then that hopefully we remember that we have God’s phone number. And God can change anything. And God does make changes—sometimes changes that we can’t see but He is always working. In a few weeks, we are going to talk about one of the most important phrases in the Bible, “And God remembered Noah.”
Sometimes it seems like God forgets our problems and needs to remember but that isn’t what “And God remembered” means. Remember is how we translate the Hebrew word zakar into English because we don’t have a word that means the same thing. Zakar doesn’t mean, “oh I forgot and all of a sudden I remembered.” Zakar means that God decided to act in someone’s favor. Zakar is used for all sorts of things but all of those things are wonderful. When the flood waters go down, and when Sarah finally has a baby, and when Rebekah and Rachel and Hannah finally have babies and when Joseph is taken out of prison and made the second greatest ruler in the land of Egypt! You think humans can make that sort of thing happen? No way—only God can remember us in a way that really gets the impossible done. Believe me, Sarah thought having a baby was impossible. Joseph thought he would rot in jail forever. Noah was probably running out of Dramamine and getting sick of the smell of the inside of the ark, which didn’t make it any better. When things get hopeless, God remembers and God takes action.
Which is why prayer is so amazing. Which is why when you have God’s phone number and someone else is in trouble, you aren’t powerless. You know not only the King do the world but the King of the Universe! And so we don’t have to be the kind of angry that we get when we are scared and can’t do anything because we can do something. I am really sad about Afghanistan but not because I am scared and can’t do anything. I am getting angry angry because people are being hurt and especially women and little girls and Christians and anyone who doesn’t want to be the kind of Muslim that the Taliban wants them to be. Most Muslims don’t want to be like Taliban Muslims! When people are being oppressed, which means harmed by the government and being killed and having absolutely no rights, I get really angry. I get angry when girls can’t go to school anymore. I get angry that women can’t leave the house. I get angry that Christians are in danger. And I am scared for them. But I am not so scared that I forget that God is really the one who is in control. I am not so scared that I forget that God can make amazing things happen even when people are being killed and oppressed by humans who are doing evil things because they think that those evil things are actually good. I know what God did when the Soviet Union was in power and people couldn’t have Bibles. I know what God is doing now in places like China and North Korea. I know what God can do in Afghanistan no matter what it looks like to us on the outside.
Most importantly, I know that every time one of God’s people prays, He remembers. We may not see how He remembers and does something good, here from the outside, but He is doing it. Maybe a prayer causes Him to zakar and hide someone. Maybe it means that a Bible gets to someone. Maybe it means that He sends a dream or a vision to a Taliban soldier and they come to love Jesus or not arrest someone that they could arrest. Maybe it means that a brother comes home from school and teaches his sister what he learned in secret. Maybe it means that a secret house church doesn’t get found out. I have been praying for the people of China every night for years. Because I want God to zakar the people of China and He does because He loves them. He loves the people of Afghanistan too. He isn’t happy when people are being hurt and when they are scared and when they can’t worship Him in public. And so when we aren’t happy about it either, that does make Him happy. So, we remind Him about the people all over the world who are suffering and also about those who don’t know Him. And you know what? One of the most powerful things we can do is to remind God to zakar in the lives of the people who think that doing evil is the right thing to do in order to serve their god and their religion. Usually, they do it because that is all they know and they have been taught that is what their god wants. They aren’t trying to do evil, they think that what they do is justified—that the end results will be worth whoever gets hurt.
So, when the grownups are scared and angry, remember that it’s the time for you to go to war and pray to God who can fix things. And prayer is a way of going to war! You don’t know how loud your voice is to God but once, Jesus was talking about children and said, “See to it that you don’t despise one of these little ones, because I tell you that in heaven their angels continually view the face of my Father in heaven.” (Matt 18:10, CSB) Did you hear that? Not only do you have an angel assigned to you, but your angel has direct access to God. If you are that important to God that you have your own guardian angel, then it means that not only are your prayers loud to God but that you also have backup. You aren’t alone. Your voice isn’t quiet to God. Your opinion is important to Him. And when you pray to Him, He does hear you.
So yes, scary things are always happening somewhere even though they aren’t usually going to happen to you. And some of the things we are scared of actually aren’t so awful, like we talked about. But you aren’t alone and you aren’t every truly powerless. When people in America were doing wrong and enslaving other people, there were some people who had the power the do things and other people who could only pray. And little by little, things started changing and a lot of people started to hate slavery and to work against it. Even though it was hard to see on the surface, things were changing. The underground railroad was helping people escape. People in the south were quietly teaching enslaved people to read and write even though it was against the law, so that they could read the Bible and not just be told what it said and in those pages they saw that God works to free people who are enslaved. So keep praying and know that God remembers.
I love you and I am praying for you and I pray that you have a wonderful week studying the Bible and praying with the people who love you.