I wanted to take some time to talk the kids about the trauma they experience after losing a beloved pet. My favorite cat Monty died unexpectedly last week and I took some time when the grief was still raw to write up this broadcast so that I could help kids to be comfortable with their emotions and to know that love is still a wonderful thing even though it can also cause us a lot of pain. I also talked a bit about how to be sensitive and kind when others are hurting. It is my hope that this will encourage conversations with parents and kids not only about pets but also when relatives pass on.

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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. 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. Parents, any scripture this week will be from the Miss Tyler Version (the MTV) which is the Christian Standard Bible reworded and expanded a bit to make it easier for kids to understand the meaning.

Parents, today we are going to talk about some sensitive issues related to losing a family pet. So, if this broadcast isn’t appropriate for your kids, this is the time to turn off the broadcast. However, I am hoping that this will reach the ears of kids who need to understand about the decisions we make for our furry, finned, or feathered family members and coping with the intense feelings of losing them.

So, I am super sad today. I am writing this about a week before I will record this broadcast because it is important to me to talk to you when real things happen that are sad for families. Last Friday, my tomcat Monty and his sister Sunflower were getting their yearly checkups and I showed the Veterinarian, the animal doctor, a lump on his back that was a few weeks old but wasn’t hurting him and I couldn’t get them in right away so I had to wait, which wasn’t a big deal. Well, the doctor didn’t like the feel of it and so she tried to see if it was just a cyst since it wasn’t hurting him. Well, it wasn’t a cyst and so she checked it for something really bad called cancer and that’s what it was. But still, as long as it was just under his skin it wasn’t a very bad deal because they could remove it plus the two other smaller lumps beside it that I hadn’t noticed. Yesterday he was supposed to get an operation but first they needed to look inside his body to make sure there weren’t any other problems. So, I waited at the store across the street for a couple of hours and organized the shirts that people had kinda messed up to keep myself occupied.

When she called me, the doctor wasn’t happy at all because Monty had lesions, which is cancer, all inside his liver and spleen and from there, it had spread everywhere in his body, and he had lost weight even in the few days between our visit and the day he was supposed to have surgery. She told me that we could keep Monty alive if we really wanted to, but that we had probably caught it just in time before he really started hurting very badly. It was very sad for me because Monty is my cat and his sister will miss him because they came from the same litter, which means their momma cat had them at the same time. So they have been together every single day of their entire lives and they love each other and snuggle and lick each other and play together all the time. Monty is my favorite out of all the cats I have ever had in my life. He was twelve years old and he was a total cuddle bunny, always purring and loving on me. I knew I would be incredibly sad without him. But I also knew that it wouldn’t be too many days before being petted by me would hurt him terribly, and he was already not wanting to eat very much in the past few days.

So, what we did was very hard but since there was no way to make him better ever again, and even though I would miss him very badly, I decided to call my sons Andrew and Matthew who rescued them from an abandoned house when they were only three weeks old and dying, and Andrew and his girlfriend Jackie were able to come and say goodbye. I brought his favorite treats because he hadn’t eaten all day because we thought he would have an operation, and he ate them like he was a wild lion eating an antelope. And then he walked around the room and butted his head against all of us and then the doctor came in and gave him a shot so that he would fall asleep. He never stopped purring and I had him wrapped in my bathrobe from home so that he wouldn’t get cold or feel scared, and it took about five minutes and he fell asleep and couldn’t feel anything anymore—like when a person has surgery and they make them go to sleep and they wake up later like nothing happened and didn’t feel anything that had happened to them.  That’s what it is like for cats and dogs because we don’t want them to be scared or to hurt anymore. We want them to still be happy and not suffering. After he went to sleep, the doctor gave him another shot and used her stethoscope to check his heart until it just wasn’t beating anymore.

Although I was really sad yesterday and today I am even sadder, I know that it was good for Monty to not be hurting just because I wanted him to still be with me. But it isn’t an easy decision to make and no matter what we do, we always wonder “what if” so we just have to make the best decision based on what they need and we have to trust God to take care of the rest. Pets aren’t like people. People can be really sick and in a lot of pain but they understand what is going on and so there is still a reason to be alive. But that isn’t true with animals. They don’t understand what is happening to them—all they know is how bad they feel all the time. We don’t do this with people because people are created in the image of God. No matter how much we love our pets, they just aren’t the same as people and so when they are going to be miserable, we can help them out. Knowing that they won’t hurt anymore makes is easier but it doesn’t make it easy.

So, that was how I spent my day yesterday, and now I am very sad and his sister is very sad too. She knows something is wrong and she started to figure out last night that Monty might be gone forever. She is just laying on the couch not looking very good and just wanting to be near me. So, I turned on the heater because it was in the 30’s this morning, so it was really cold, and sometimes when we are crying and sad we get cold and can’t warm ourselves back up.

Have you ever lost a pet? Pets are very special to us because they love us with their whole hearts, and even if they get angry because we clipped their claws or shooed them off the table (no poo-poo paws on my table, I always say) or if they don’t like the new food you gave them to eat or, worst of all, if you have to give a cat a bath, they forgive us and want to be with us again pretty quick. They forget what we do to make them mad—not like humans because we can be angry at someone for a long time. Dogs are especially forgiving, even if cats might take a while. My dog Bandit died in the spring, he was very old, and our other old dog died the year before. My dogs were always glad to see me and didn’t care what I looked like or anything about me—they just loved me and wanted to do everything with me. It’s very nice to have a friend like that, who wants to be with you even when no one else does and pretty much thinks you are the best thing ever! Sometimes they even sleep with us at night, or maybe they can do tricks and play with us. It’s great having a companion, a friend, who is always there when we need them. When they are gone, we can’t just get a new puppy or kitten or bird or hamster because they all have different personalities.

It’s very important to give ourselves time to be sad. Being sad is what always happens when we love someone and then they are gone. There’s nothing wrong with that. Even Jesus cried when His friend Lazarus died—even though He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. In Bible days, when someone died, all the neighbors would come over and sit with the family and they would all cry and be as emotional as they wanted, and for a whole week no one did anything else. They knew it was important to be sad and that it takes as much time as it takes for people to stop being sad all the time. But just because they aren’t sad all the time doesn’t mean that they can’t get sad for a while again. That’s normal and good too. God gave us these wonderful emotions and gave us the ability to love others and a need to be loved back and He didn’t do that because it is terrible to be sad. Girls cry, boys cry, mommies cry, and so do daddies. We all cry because we are dealing with a loss.

A loss is when you had something important to you but now it is gone. It feels really bad to not have that animal or something or someone in your life anymore. God gave us our emotions to help us deal with that. Just imagine your best friend moving away to another place and you just don’t even care. Does that sound right? You’d be disappointed and lonely and sad, right? But some people are really weird when other people feel sad. Instead of just sitting and hugging and crying and just listening, they try to get us to cheer up because grief, when we are sad about someone dying, makes some people feel bad and strange and they think they can just joke with us or give us a donut or take us to the park and we will suddenly not hurt anymore or miss them. Well, that’s not how love works and we are sad for as long as we are sad and that’s that. God wouldn’t give us those kinds of feelings if they weren’t important.  

Or maybe you got mad because this happened to a pet you loved and didn’t understand why the adults in your life had to make the same decision I made. Maybe your pet looked okay but had things that were so wrong on the inside that they were going to start having very terrible lives. I know that it is hard, but remember that they loved your pet too and it was very, very difficult for them to do that and especially since they knew how much it would hurt you. They might not have cried in front of you, but they might have cried alone in the car on the way back home or later that night. They might feel terribly guilty even though they know they made the right choice to be kind. Sometimes, when we don’t understand and aren’t the people who have to make the hard decisions about what to do—it’s easy for us to be frustrated with and even mean to the person who had to do it. If that’s the case, I want you to pray to God about it and ask Him to show you what to do. You might need to forgive them and say you are sorry for being so angry at them. I know that what I sure needed was a big hug because I kept thinking that maybe there would be a miracle and he would get better. But I have to tell you that if I let him live and I was wrong, it would have been very bad for Monty in probably just another week and I would regret keeping him alive. And he wouldn’t want to be alive anymore. Sometimes, adults see problems that kids can’t because we have experienced more. An important part of being a grownup is knowing when our animal’s lives need to end.

And you might be angry at God, or just angry because you think it is unfair that your pet had to die. And you just want to be left alone to cry and sort things out but people bug us, trying to cheer us up and  think they are doing us a favor when we really just want them to go away and leave us alone, right? And some people say terrible awful things while trying to be helpful that only makes it a lot worse. And sometimes when that happens, we just want to clench our fists, stomp on the ground, and tell them to shut up! Because we were sad but then they came along and said something hurtful and now we are angry and sad and we are sorry we even know them, right? That’s normal too. Some people think they always have to say something when they shouldn’t say anything at all. Being hugged can be good but hearing a speech isn’t always what we need. It’s okay to ask politely to be left alone to pray or to sleep or to cry or however you need to handle it.

But, you know what? When people say mean or stupid things when they are trying to be helpful, it’s important that we pay attention to what things make us feel bad, or hurt even worse than we already do, or make us feel like we should be happy instead. Of course, you aren’t happy! Why should you be?? Maybe you are relieved that your pet doesn’t hurt anymore but that isn’t the same thing as being happy. It’s more than okay to be sad and the Bible tells us many stories where someone dies and everyone cries and even for a long time sometimes. But people can say some awful things trying to make you feel better.

They might say, “Well, at least it wasn’t your mom or dad or your brother or sister, at least it was just a pet.” And dude, that is so mean! Making you feel guilty and foolish for being sad when you have every right to be sad is bad enough, but making you think about your family members getting sick and dying is even worse. It isn’t helpful at all and it is just scary. Just like when I got told by someone that if I didn’t want what happened to Monty to happen to my other two cats, they would tell me what to feed them and that was right after I came home, very sad. And then all of a sudden, I was hurting more and upset about the thought of my other kitties dying. That person meant well because she was concerned about my other animals. The timing was just wrong. Or how about, “At least they won’t suffer anymore.” But that doesn’t help either because then you might feel like they are saying you are wrong to be so sad. Of course we don’t want them to hurt but we miss them so much. We don’t want them to suffer but we do want them with us and healthy so that we can love them. You know what? No one should ever say those two words to someone who is hurting, “at least” or “look on the bright side.”

What about when someone says that we should have made different choices and how awful we are for helping our animal to die? Well, they weren’t there and they don’t know and some people just think way too much about their own opinions and can’t even imagine that anyone knows more about a situation than they do, or that their opinions aren’t helpful, or even correct. There are always going to be people who talk without thinking about how it would make them feel to hear that when they are already feeling horrible.

Or they might ask, “Did you pray?” And that isn’t helpful either because that can make people feel guilty thinking that they didn’t pray enough or that maybe they should be angry at God for not saving their loved one when they did pray. When we are sad, we need God to be there as our comforter and friend and to know that He is sad because we are sad but when we get angry at Him, we push Him away when we need Him most and when He wants to be there for us the most. When bad things happen, people want there to be a reason, someone to blame, some way to keep it from happening in the future but you know what? Bad things happen because they happen. Everyone in the Bible, including Jesus and especially Jesus, had terrible things happen to them. Sometimes because they did something wrong themselves and sometimes because someone else chose to hurt them, but God doesn’t go around killing people because you didn’t pray enough. He doesn’t have this list that says, “Uh oh, Janie only prayed nine times and not ten so I am not going to help.” The truth is that everything and everyone dies, and if they didn’t then the world would get pretty bad really quick. We all have our time on earth and when we are really blessed, we get people and animals to love and who love us in return. But nothing lasts forever.

Some people might ask, “Why are you so sad? It’s only a pet!” And when they say that, you might feel dumb and embarrassed for crying. Or they might say, “Oh that’s nothing, when my dog died it was much worse because…” Or “I know exactly how you feel because…” but they are making your hurt all about themselves! It’s very nice to hear things instead like, “I am so sorry, that’s so hard. It is terrible when the pet you love dies. I know how hard it is because I have been there too and if you ever just want to talk, I can listen and I will understand. You aren’t alone, and you aren’t weird for being sad, and crying, and even being angry and feeling guilty. You didn’t do anything wrong. I know you loved them very much and made them very happy. They had a good life with you and now that has changed and it is good and right to be sad for as long as you are sad.”

I am a grownup and so I know that Monty didn’t die because I did anything wrong, or didn’t pray enough, and God didn’t kill Monty because He was angry with me. Monty died because something went wrong in an organ called his spleen and the cells went crazy and it spread to his liver and then it went all through the insides of his body. It’s something that happens sometimes no matter how good care we take of our pets. I have probably had twenty pets over my life, cats and dogs, and it is fun having them as puppies and kittens, and then as grown-up pets, and as they get older the time comes for them to die one day. And that day is hard and so are a lot of days afterward. But you know what? It was worth it. I would still do it all over again even though I am sad right now. Right now, I am having trouble remembering what it felt like to have him on my lap purring for the last twelve years because it hurts too much when I think about him. But I am only hurting right now because of all that love. I still had all those good times with him when I played with him as a kitten, and when he jumped in my bed for cuddles, or when he would follow me into the backyard when I would work in the garden. Sadness doesn’t make love bad because it was always good and it is still good. Monty dying doesn’t undo all of the wonderful times and hopefully it won’t be long before I can remember the silly things he did and smile or even laugh. Love is always good. Love is God’s gift to us. There will never be another cat exactly like Monty and I had to stop myself yesterday from going to get another kitten because that wouldn’t help right now, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be other things in my life that are just as good even though they will never be the same.

In the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, the teacher says: “There is a time for everything, and a time here on earth to do everything: there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant things and a time to pull them out, a time to kill and a time for healing, a time to tear things down and a time to build things up, a time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to mourn (which is what we do when someone dies) and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them up, a time for hugs and a time when we don’t want to be hugged, a time to search for things and a time to give up because they are lost forever, a time to keep things and a time to throw them away, a time to tear things apart and a time to fix things, a time to be quiet and a time to speak up and be heard, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

This is a very famous part of the Bible and there is even a song about this because this is some of the best poetry ever written by anyone ever. A lot of Hebrew poetry doesn’t sound very poetic when it is translated to English but this one does. We have to understand what people need when they need it and also what we need when we need it. If someone has died, then it is time to be sad. If a new baby is born, it’s time to dance and laugh and be happy. There is a time when medicine can make someone better again, and times when it can’t. Everyone who has even been born will die someday, usually because they get old and their bodies wear out, and that’s a good thing because just imagine if we got older and older and it was harder and harder to walk and we just never died? Dying can be a good thing then but the people who love that person are going to be incredibly sad and that is right too. It isn’t selfish to wish someone we love was still around. It just means that we love and miss them. And it is the time to cry. And so, I have been crying a lot and when I see my grown-up kids, I put out my arms because I need a hug and they do too. And I feel guilty because his sister Sunflower is incredibly sad and she doesn’t know why her brother isn’t here anymore. Those are normal feelings and God is helping me to feel them. He will always help you with your feelings too and you can be honest with Him even if you are really angry with Him. The people in the Bible do that a lot, because our relationship with God is very real and He knows what we are thinking anyway so why try to hide it from Him? He can take it. His love is bigger than anything you are feeling.

I love you. I am praying for you. And I am glad for my time with Monty. I bet you can say that you are very glad for the good things in your life too, even if they won’t be around forever. The Bible tells us that one day, God will wipe away all our tears and I can tell you that He does it here and now too. He heals us when we are sad because He loves us.

This week I am going to introduce you to my wonderful, funny, and beautiful young friend Savannah Smalling who is going through a tough few years in and out of the hospital. And when things like this happen, or any other tragedy, we ask ourselves the same question we hear in the lamentation Psalms–why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? We’re going to look at Psalm 73 and how the Bible encourages us to bring our complaints and confusion and anger to God. Is this a question we can even answer? Let’s find out. 

If you are on Facebook, you can follow Savannah’s journey here. She loves talking to new friends!

https://www.facebook.com/My.Sweet.Savannah.Smalling

If you can’t see the podcast player, click here. This is probably a better one to listen to than to read, if possible. Tone of voice is important in things like this.

Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. 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.

Today we’re going to talk about my good friend Savannah Smalling and her family. They are people who I love a whole lot. And we are also going to talk about something called Theodicy. And theodicy is something we find a lot of in the Bible and especially the Psalms. Theodicy is the fancy word that theologians (those are people who study all the stuff about God) use when they are asking, “If God is good then why is there so much evil in the world?” And maybe you have asked that too—we all ask that. It’s normal. It’s a good question! There is nothing wrong with asking that question because we find it all over the place in the Bible. The Bible gives us permission to ask God all sorts of things, and to be angry, and confused, and to even ask if God is really so good. Never forget that God already knows exactly how you are feeling and thinking so you might as well be honest with Him.

Many years ago, I was very angry with God about things that happened when I was a kid. And He never protected me. He let bullies hurt me for years. And I hated Him for it. I loved Jesus but I hated God and maybe you feel like you hate God too sometimes, but maybe you can’t admit it because everyone around you might freak out. But you know what? Sometimes they hate God too. Sometimes they are angry and confused and wonder what on earth He is doing! Now, in the ancient world, all the pagan nations could never admit that about their gods because their gods would just nuke them or worse. If one person got angry at their gods then they thought terrible things might happen to the whole community. Maybe there would be no rain and they would all starve! Maybe locusts would eat all their crops and they would starve! Maybe the earth would open and swallow them down whole. Maybe an army from another country would kill them all because their god wouldn’t protect them anymore! They had to be super careful around their gods because their gods were super touchy and easily offended. But one of the ways our God shows His goodness is by allowing us to be angry, and to ask questions, and to sometimes even accuse Him of stuff when we just don’t understand why everything is going wrong.

And the reason He allows us to do that, to be open and honest with Him when we are angry and struggling, is because we are in a Covenant with Him. That means that we have a real relationship with God—we aren’t just people who go to church and sing worship songs and put money in the plate. We are people who live with God every moment of every day. We are people who God sees and knows inside and out. Jesus said that every hair on our heads is numbered—wow, God loves you so much that he even keeps track of your hair. It means that God doesn’t forget us. That He hasn’t abandoned us. That we can always talk to Him about everything and anything we are thinking or feeling or going through and we can know that He really does care. When we accepted Jesus as our Savior and King, it meant that we started a wonderful relationship with God, and that we will live with Him in the world to come—when Jesus is King of the earth. And that is a wonderful promise.

But that also makes God very confusing because we want the kind of relationship where He protects us from everything bad that could ever happen to us, where we never get sick and no one we love ever gets hurt or dies. We want to always have enough money and for the weather to always be nice. We want the people around us to be kind and generous and if they aren’t we want them to be punished and we want everyone to hate them and see how awful they are! Those are the kinds of things we think and those kinds of thoughts become something called expectations. Expectations happen when we believe that someone else owes us something, or that we should be able to do something just because we want to be able to do it. And we all tend to think that God should make our lives wonderful and easy, right? We don’t want the bad stuff to happen to us or to the people we love. We don’t understand why He allows so many terrible things to happen to the people who love Him. I know that I really struggle with that too because if I was God then everyone I love would have it really good and would never get sick or suffer at all. But then I imagine that the people who make me mad wouldn’t be very happy because if Miss Tyler had that kind of power, then she would probably start to be pretty evil and mean. Just being honest here. No one except God and Jesus can handle that kind of power and not be crazy about how they use it.

But, yesterday I found out my friend Savannah is having problems again. Savannah and one of my sons have the same medical problem. They have something called hydrocephalus—which means “water on the brain.” Our brains are surrounded inside and outside by something called CSF, and it keeps our brains floating so that when we fall or turn our heads, our brains won’t crash into our skulls and we make more CSF all the time in our bodies. But with Savannah and my son, they keep making more CSF but the old CSF doesn’t go away and so it can be very painful. Just think of a bottle with something inside it. If it has a hole near the top, then you can keep putting in more water forever and the bottle won’t burst. But if the bottle doesn’t have a hole then the new water will just keep trying to force it’s way inside. So Savannah and my son have valves in their skull that allow the CSF to drain away into another part of their body where it isn’t a problem. My son hasn’t had many problems and he has only had four shunts put in since he was six days old and got his first one, and he got his last one two years ago when he was nineteen. But Savannah hasn’t been as fortunate—she has been suffering so much and the doctors have tried so many things and yesterday I just got so angry and so I went into my backyard and was digging up my dead strawberry patch and was yelling at God.

“It’s not fair! How come my son’s shunt is okay and Savannah’s isn’t? Why does she have to hurt all the time? It’s not fair. You can fix this—why are you letting her hurt like this. It isn’t like she deserves this. She isn’t a criminal and she loves you and her parents love you. I love my friends, Lord, and I don’t even know what to say to them and they live so far away that I can’t be there for them and I am angry. I am grateful that you have been so kind to my son and to me and God, I feel guilty that Andrew is okay and she isn’t. What’s going on? Why Savannah? I know you see how hard this is on her parents. What do you want from them? Are we not praying enough? I know that isn’t the problem. I just don’t even know what to say because I am so angry and I am embarrassed because I don’t have any answers for them and it doesn’t seem right that, with all the terrible things I have done in my life, and with what a goober my kid can be—why this has happened like this. We don’t deserve this Lord, and they don’t deserve it. I am grateful but I am also so confused and hurt. Why is one doing okay and the other isn’t? I know it isn’t because you don’t love her because when I pray I feel your love for her. Why won’t you just fix her!!!”

And eighteen months ago, I did the same thing when my son’s shunt was not working for the second time in a month and we thought he would die. And two years ago, when a young friend died unexpectedly, and over the last two years when so many people I knew were so sick with COVID. And over the last month with the war in Ukraine. I get angry and I talk to God about it and sometimes I am so frustrated with Him that I don’t even know what to do. Maybe you have felt that way when you are sick, or have a sick pet, or when bullies are after you at school, or you studied really hard but failed your test, or broke your leg just before the big game or whatever. When life isn’t fair, we ask the big questions. We want there to be easy answers but unfortunately, sometimes things just happen. And we get angry because we know in our hearts that life was never supposed to be like this. Maybe it’s because of the Adam and Eve DNA that we all have in us, We know that our lives were meant to be perfect and wonderful, without sickness and death and hardship. And because we know that, deep down, we get angry when we are stuck with this crazy world where sometimes everything seems upside down. God didn’t mean for it to be like this but we’ve always been out of control and so we have sickness and there are people who hurt other people and sometimes we hurt other people. If we all just loved one another like the Bible commands, there would be almost nothing left for God to need to fix.

In Psalm 73, we see someone who is really angry at God, but really confused too. This is the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version:

“God is really good to his people, the people who aren’t just out there faking it. But I lost my balance and almost abandoned him because I was jealous of all those people who are just so full of themselves and the really mean people I know who have everything they could ever want. Life is so easy for them—they don’t struggle and they’re eating out at fancy restaurants every night. They never get caught for the stuff they do and they never get in trouble. They never get sick and nothing ever goes wrong for them. So they are out there with their noses in the air thinking they are all that and a bag of chips, and it’s like it doesn’t even matter how much they hurt people. They get to eat so much that even their eyeballs are fat, and whatever they want to do, they just go and do. They make fun of others and spread lies about them to hurt them, and they threaten to do terrible things to people who can’t even defend themselves. And they even disrespect God and never miss an opportunity to just say whatever nasty stuff they want. And so people see them not getting punished and they actually like go out following them and listening to them! They just can’t get enough. And these villains say, “God is powerless, if He knew what I was doing and saying and He was really so great, I’d be dead!”

“I mean, just look at those guys! They never have any troubles at all, life is so easy for them, everything goes their way and they just get richer and richer. Come on, am I following God for nothing? Am I obeying His commandments for nothing? What’s in it for me? My life is so terrible, all day long and every morning it’s like something worse comes around. But if I admit it in public, if I admit how much I just am jealous of those guys who do nothing but wrong and enjoy nothing but blessings, I know that I am going to send people in the wrong direction, away from you. And I have tried to understand, but nothing made sense and I didn’t think it ever would. But then I came into your Sanctuary, into your presence and the place where Your throne is, and you made me understand—You gave them everything to see what they would do with it. You made their lives easy to see if they would be good or bad. And because they have had it so easy, and should have been so grateful and humbled, they have no excuse for what will happen to them when you finally judge them. When I thought they were blessed, it was actually a curse because their blessings became a trap. They won’t even know what hit them because it disgusts you to see what they have done with all their blessings.

“I really thought they had it made, because I was hurting and I was acting like what we have here in this life is all there is. I was forgetting what You have done for us and what You promised to give us. Yes, You see what they are doing and how evil it is but You are not smiling at them, You have never abandoned me and You are always here to whisper encouragement to me when I need it. You have kept me on the right side of things and I will spend eternity with You in Your Kingdom where everything here will seem like nothing in comparison. You are my future and everything I want in this life. Even though I fall sometimes and mess up and forget how good you are and even though I will grow old and weak, You are there for me always and I can depend on You. You are all I really need. Those people who I envy now, their end will be terrible—sometimes I forget that. But as for me, I have You in my life and that is more than wealth, and good food, and health and whatever else those villains seem to have that I don’t. I will tell people about that.”

You see? That’s in the Bible. Things are wrong, and we get angry, and we talk it out, and then we remember what we have, that they don’t have. We remember that this life isn’t all that there is and that the people who seem to have it all sometimes actually have nothing. But still, we might ask ourselves why we aren’t getting perks in this life and special treatment. Well, I imagine that we do sometimes and we just don’t see it because there are things we just don’t see because they never ended up happening. Car accidents are probably a big one. But why doesn’t God just reward us with easy lives? Wouldn’t that seem like the right thing to do to reward our loyalty?

I don’t think it would. I have known a lot of people with easy lives and they are some of the worst people I have ever met—like the guy who wrote Psalm 73 was talking about. Think about it from God’s point of view—if nothing ever went wrong for us, we’d be like those kids who are spoiled rotten and mean-spirited, always screaming and kicking to get what they want and not able to handle hearing the word no or even knowing how to deal with disappointment and pain. We’d become people who are just insufferable and we’d think that our lives are easy because we deserve it and that people who have troubles must deserve it. And I know people like that. Some of them are in churches and they make life really hard for others. But if people around the world started seeing that Christians were all rich and never got sick or had bad things happen, then everyone would become a Christian but not because they loved God or really believed in Jesus or wanted to keep the commandments to love Him and other people, they’d just be in it for the blessings. I guess it would be like if you were really rich and had a lot of friends but you wouldn’t ever know if they just wanted you around because you had the money to pay for everything. What if you ran out of money, would they still even like you?

Because we have bad things happen, and still love God and still try to follow Him, people who don’t believe in Him notice that we are different. It shows them that God is real—but God isn’t sending horrible things against us just to teach other people that He’s worth worshipping. The truth is that things happen to us the same way that things happen to everyone. How mean would it be for God to only let bad things happen to people who refused to worship Him? That would be just so spiteful and petty, right? Why would anyone trust a God who is only good and kind to the people who love Him? Jesus said that even the tax collectors were nice to their friends—but it didn’t mean that they weren’t being rotten to the people they didn’t like. Because God is love, He doesn’t punish people for not worshiping Him. He uses the bad things that happen in our lives to grow us up into more compassionate, loving, merciful and humble people—but He isn’t sending those things on us. Bad things happen to everyone. Things go wrong in everyone’s lives. A while back, my son broke his ankle and sprained his knee and my dog suddenly died within six hours on a Friday afternoon. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even have time to cry about my dog because I had to take care of my son! But pets die all the time, and especially since my dog was almost fifteen years old. And people have accidents at work all the time. That’s just normal. But when bad things happen and we make it through, God is showing us that He never leaves our side even when it feels like He doesn’t care at all.

So why does God let terrible things happen to good people? I don’t know. But I do know that bad things happen to everyone sometimes. And sometimes people have a lot of bad things happening like my friend Savannah. But it isn’t because God doesn’t love her—He loves her so much. I can feel His love for her when I pray for her. And when I was yelling at Him for how unfair this is, I could feel that He understood. People, since Adam and Eve, have made a big mess of things, and sometimes they just decide to pile up on a person—but that’s when that person is also getting extra attention from God. He is watching and He sees and He is working in ways that they may never know about. And He has plans for them, even when they think everything is horrible. And when we trust Him even when everything looks like we shouldn’t, we can know that it makes Him happy even though our being hurt doesn’t make Him happy. How do we know that having everything go wrong doesn’t mean that God hates us or leaves us or is punishing us?

From beginning to end, the Bible is full of stories of terrible things happening to the people God has chosen to do special things for Him and people who made Him happy. Did God hate Abel just because Cain killed Him? Nope, Abel’s offering made God really happy but Cain chose to do something evil. That wasn’t God’s choice, that was Cain’s choice. God gives us the choice to be good to people or evil, if we didn’t have that choice then the planet would be filled with a bunch of really nice puppets but it wouldn’t mean anything because no one could do what they wanted. Sarah couldn’t have a baby until she was ninety years old because she was disabled and her womb was broken. Everyone would have thought she was useless as a wife and a woman and maybe even being punished for her sins—that’s what they thought in those days. And Sarah got kidnapped by kings, twice, because she was beautiful and they decided to steal her from her family. She also lived through terrible famines. Sounds like she must have been a terrible person to deserve that! Nope, that stuff just happens to people. She didn’t deserve those things.

Joseph’s mom died when he was very young. His ten older brothers hated him and tricked him and threw him into a pit and then sold him into slavery in Egypt. And even though he was a very honest slave, the wife of his master lied about him and he was left to rot in jail for many years. But he was innocent, and God wasn’t being cruel to him—people were. Aaron and Miriam grew up as slaves. The Israelite baby boys were commanded to be killed by Pharaoh. Aaron’s two sons died on the same day.

David was chosen by God to be King of Israel when he was just a teenager, the youngest child of a very large family. But King Saul was jealous and hunted him until he was forty years old. David had to always be on the run and hiding in caves and his wife Michael was taken away from him and then his wife Abigail was kidnapped. Those bad things happened because people decided to do evil things, but not because God was angry.

What about Jesus? He was perfect and was tortured and killed because people made evil decisions. What about the prophets? Many of them were killed by people who were angry about what they were saying about sin. And John the Baptist, he was killed by King Herod for talking about sin. And if you read 2 Cor 11—you won’t even believe all the stuff that happened to Paul as he traveled the Roman Empire preaching about Jesus. Bad things happen no matter how much God loves us or uses us for the good of His Kingdom.

What about Samantha, my young friend? What she is going through isn’t fair, and it isn’t a punishment from God, and He doesn’t hate her. And I don’t know why things are so hard for her and her family. It isn’t right. It was never supposed to be like this. We should all be tending a Garden and making it spread all over the earth. That’s what God wanted, that was His plan for us. And so now we have to do what we can to make the world less bad. And so when we think of Savannah, we mention her to God, and we pray and ask Him to help her. We ask Him because deep down we know how good and kind He is even when we are confused and angry. So, would you please pray for my friend Savannah? Maybe we will understand someday, but right now all we can do is wrestle with God and complain and trust Him that in the end, everything will be the way He planned it from the beginning—a world without sickness and death and evil.

I love you. I am praying for you, and I hope you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.

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.