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.

Sometimes when we are angry, God is the last one we want to talk to but He really should be the first one we go to. This week, I am going to share a fictional story about how things could have handled differently, in order to teach kids how to talk to God when they just want to avoid Him instead.

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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.

We’ve spent a lot of weeks talking about Genesis chapter 4—mostly about Cain but also about a man named Lamech. The theme of this chapter might be, “How not to handle your anger.” Cain is like the poster boy for doing everything wrong despite having every opportunity in the world to do things right. He even had God reaching out to him and talking to him and telling him what to do and what not to do. Despite God’s guidance and mercy, Cain just kept moving farther and farther away from doing the right thing and everyone suffered terribly because of it. All because Cain wanted God to accept whatever he did and got angry when God refused. And we’ve all done that—make the wrong choices and then get mad when someone points it out and tells us to do better. And maybe we didn’t get angry enough to kill someone (I sure hope not) but maybe we really hurt other people who didn’t deserve it. Fortunately, the mercy that was there for Cain is also there for us, but we need to respond to God’s mercy in the right way—not like Cain, who took that mercy and ran away from God.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Cain had listened to God instead of ignoring Him and then going out and killing his brother? The world would be a much different place. Sure, someone would have murdered someone else at some point, but Abel would have lived and had children of his own and he and Cain would have been happy together as brothers. Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had the heartache that they lived with for the rest of their lives. God may not talk to you out loud like He did with Cain, but He still tells you what is right and wrong. Usually, when we do something wrong, we know it is wrong but we make a decision not to care. That’s a huge mistake. That’s how small sins become huge transgressions. Remember how, in the Bible, there are three words for what we call sin? In the English, that’s sin, iniquity and transgression. They are like the “small, medium, and large” categories of sins. Mistakes are different than things we do on purpose but feel bad about and those aren’t nearly as serious as things we do on purpose and don’t feel at all bad about. None of them are good but we can all see that they aren’t equal in God’s eyes either because of how He labels them in the Bible.

So, how do we keep our small mistakes from becoming huge transgressions? The answer is prayer—and prayer is talking to God and listening to His still, small voice. I’ve told you how important it is to talk to God about absolutely everything, no matter what it is. I mean, He knows everything anyway so it isn’t like you can fool Him or hide anything from Him—like Cain tried to do after he killed his brother. That’s our starting place. God is always waiting and wanting to hear from us. He wants us to love Him so much that we never ignore Him. But talking to Him isn’t enough, we also have to listen for His voice to speak back to us and when we hear it, we need to obey Him. That’s the hard part because usually He only speaks to us when He needs to tell us something that we probably don’t want to hear—like when He told Cain that his offering wasn’t a good one.

No one likes to be told that they are wrong or that what they have done is bad. We want to think that we are right and that whatever we do, it is good—but that isn’t reasonable. No one is right all the time. Not even super smart people or super nice people. Being smart doesn’t make people right about everything they think or do and being nice doesn’t mean you always do the right thing either. In the same way, just because someone is a great athlete doesn’t mean that they are going to win every race or game they play. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone believes wrong things. Everyone tries to do things that end up being a really bad idea. None of us is perfect and so one of the most important things we can learn in growing up is how to accept that we can be wrong and still be wonderful, worthwhile people. Being wrong or making a mistake, or losing a game, or failing a test doesn’t mean that we are terrible people or that we are unlovable. We may be disappointed in ourselves, but we just get back up and try again. Even when we sin on purpose and feel badly about it later, that doesn’t mean that God is done with us, we just get back up and learn from our mistakes. What we should never make the mistake of doing is get so angry about our mistakes that we blame everyone around us, or get angry at everyone, or become resentful of the people who did things right.

Can I tell you a secret? There are a lot of people who are afraid of being wrong, of losing, and of failure. Maybe there is always someone waiting to be mean to them over every little mistake, and they have learned to worry all the time about what that person is going to say or do next. People like that grow up into adults who don’t know how to deal with admitting their mistakes. They get angry and blow up a lot. Sometimes, they can’t be nice to other people who make mistakes and they treat others the way they were treated. Sometimes, they don’t even know how to do anything except notice when other people are wrong. They don’t know how to say, “Good job!” when someone does something right, or say, “Good game!” when they lose. Sometimes they don’t know how to admit when they are wrong about something and they attack the people who were actually right. Sometimes they might even hate the people who were right. Sometimes, they will even lie about the truth just so that they can try to fool other people into thinking they were right all along. I hope that you don’t know anyone like that, but if you do I want you to talk to God about it and pray for them. Most of all, I don’t want you to allow them to make you feel bad about yourself. Always be honest when you are wrong, don’t blame other people when you fail, and don’t let being wrong or failing stop you from trying again and doing better next time.

But I am also going to tell you something else about being wrong and losing. It bothers almost everyone. So, if those things make you angry, don’t feel like you are alone. The thing is that, as you grow up and become more mature and as God changes your heart, it will bother you less and less. Why? Because you will find out that God isn’t interested in your opinions always being right or if you win or not. God is more interested in you doing what is right when you know the right thing to do. Sometimes, doing what is right means we are going to lose. Look at King David. He actually had a couple of chances to kill his enemy, King Saul, but he would have to do it through some pretty dirty tricks so he decided not to do it. And King Saul was trying to hunt David down to kill him—not because David did anything wrong but because he was jealous. Later on, David did do some terrible things when he was king and God had to confront him about it and punish him, but David accepted his punishment—unlike Cain.

Today, I want to tell a fictional story, a pretend story, about what might have happened if Cain had prayed instead of sulked. Maybe it can give you ideas about how to talk to God when you are angry and hurting. Maybe it will let you know that it is totally safe to admit to God when you are angry with Him. Not like he doesn’t know, right? Now, I am going to make some assumptions about the offerings they made, even though the Bible doesn’t tell us why Cain’s offering wasn’t good. So, just know that this is fictional, made up, and not what necessarily happened. It’s okay to do that as long as we know that’s what is going on.

God smelled the fat roasting on the family altar and was very pleased. He saw that Abel had taken the firstborn lamb of his best ewe and had offered it up. God was very impressed with Abel’s faith because that lamb was very valuable. From that lamb, Abel could have greatly enlarged his flock but instead he gave it as a gift to God. God responded by blessing the ewe and next year she would have twins and she would never fail to have healthy babies. He looked over to Cain and saw that he had made some unleavened bread from some of the new grain from his harvest, as he did every year. But this year there was a problem and God frowned. God knew that was not the best of Cain’s wheat harvest. Cain had taken wheat that he didn’t really want to eat and had mixed it in with some old barley and was offering up that, and he hadn’t spent as much time as he should have in grinding it so the bread he made was very coarse. Cain wouldn’t even want to eat it himself. God could tell that Cain’s heart really wasn’t in the offering. God filled Abel’s heart with joy, but Cain felt God’s disapproval. When Cain looked over at his brother and saw the peace and joy in his face, he got very angry and threw the bread away and stomped off.

But after a while, God spoke to Cain. “Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” (Gen 4:6-7 CSB)

Cain replied, “I am just so angry. Sometimes, I just want to do things my own way and I don’t know why you are so fussy and why my way isn’t good enough for you! What use do you have for the best of the wheat anyway? I work so hard just to make enough for the family to eat and then you want me to give the best part to you—of the barley, of the wheat, and of everything! I know you don’t eat it, but we do, and we need it. It’s so unfair.”

God spoke to Cain very gently. “You do work very hard to feed your family and that makes me very happy. I am never unhappy with how hard you work. But, like your parents before you, there are things that you don’t understand about the way the world needs to work. They didn’t understand why it was important not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Serpent tricked them into thinking that I was trying to keep something good away from them, something that they needed. And they believed that; they decided that they knew better than me what was best for them. But your father can tell you, and has told you, that as soon as he took a bite, he regretted it. He knew things that he didn’t know how to deal with. But once he knew, it was too late. Once you know something or see something or hear something, you can never really not know, see or hear it. It’s in there forever and it changes you. As for you, you live in a world that I created and I either bless it or curse it—for your good. I do it to teach you to trust me so that you will learn to depend on me and only on me because, Cain, you need me. You need me more than you need your father or mother or brother and more than your wife and children will need you. They can’t bless the land or save you from what that Serpent did. But I can, and I will. Maybe not when you want or how you want, but I will.”

“Cain, have you ever noticed how much easier it is for you to grow your crops than it is for your father? That’s because I have always blessed your work. You get more barley and wheat and fruit and nuts because you have always done what was right in the past, and gave me the very first of your harvest, the best of it. So, can you tell me what changed this year and why you stopped honoring me by giving me the best?”

Cain was still looking down at the ground and kicked a rock, stubbing his sandalled toe. “It was harder this year than normal. It seems like everything was such a chore. I felt like you weren’t helping me as much as you should….” And right away, Cain saw the problem and stopped.

God replied, almost chuckling, “Yes, once you say it out loud to me, it doesn’t seen to make as much sense, does it! I am glad you are seeing the problem. A blessing is not a blessing at all if you think you deserve it. If you believe that I owe it to you for life to be easy. Cain, don’t you see? I saw that attitude growing in your heart all last season. You forgot who you are and forgot who I AM. You thought that I owed you my blessing, as though we are coworkers, and stopped appreciating what I, your Creator, was doing for you. I don’t have to bless you. I always enjoyed blessing you because I love you so much. But I loved you too much to let you keep believing what you were believing. So, yes, things were harder. There wasn’t as much water as usual, so your harvest was kinda pathetic. And I didn’t keep the bug population low and they ate some of your crop. I gave you only enough to survive on—because I don’t want you to die but I wanted to see if you would still give me the best. And Cain, if you had given me your best today, I could have multiplied the grain you had stored away, and you would have eaten much more than enough. Cain, I have always taken care of you, but I don’t owe it to you to make it easy for you. What I want is for you to trust me and when you don’t, I have to do whatever it takes to fix things. Because, Cain my beloved child, you need me and you need to trust me.”

Cain sighed and nodded, “I am sorry Lord, you are right. I was so angry and felt so betrayed—not because there wasn’t enough but because there was only just enough and I just felt entitled to have more. I have the best tucked away, and I will go back and grind it and give it to you. I will do what I know is right. Thanks for always taking care of us.”

As Cain was heading back to the granary, he ran into his brother Abel and told him the whole story. Abel laughed hard and loud. “Oh brother,” Abel roared, “Let me tell you a story that I have never confided in anyone. Years ago, we had that year where there weren’t very many lambs and the only lambs were born to our brand new ewes and so I knew I was supposed to give all of those firstborn lambs to God. But I didn’t want to. So, I hid two of them and only offered the third up to God. And He did the exact same thing to me that He did to you. It was a test and I had failed—miserably! And I was angry too—angry that I got caught. Wasn’t it hilarious that I thought I could hide those lambs? That I was fooling all of you into thinking I had offered them all but had them in another valley grazing? You all thought I was so righteous but really it was all one big lie? Well, God didn’t accept my offering any more than He accepted yours and I actually held out for a few days before breaking down and doing what needed to be done and do you remember what happened the very next year? Ten new lambs! I will tell you that I never really enjoy giving up those firstborn lambs, but I do it because I know, in my heart of hearts, that in the end God will take care of us.”

Cain laughed too. It felt good to know that he wasn’t the only faithless person on earth sometimes. That his brother, whom he was so angry at this morning, was just like him and had made the exact same mistake of not trusting God and even tried to fool him. Abel wasn’t the problem and God wasn’t the problem—Cain knew now that his lack of trust was the problem and that it was actually normal and that God didn’t hate him for it and that God hadn’t given up on him or lightning bolted his butt on the spot.

“Wow,” Cain thought to himself, “I really had God pegged all wrong. I had always wondered why He kicked our parents out of that Garden but now I see how fair He is. I see how He wants us to be honest, and trusting, even when times are tough. And when I was honest with Him, He didn’t yell at me or kill me for it. He knew exactly what was going on in my mind all along. He knew what I was trying so hard to hide from Him and He reached out to me and loved me and gave me a chance to fix everything and start all over again.”

Cain remembered the story that his parents had told about living in the Garden and about how, when God confronted them, they lied and blamed everyone but themselves. Dad blamed mom, mom blamed the Serpent. God had to kick them out of the garden because no one would own what they had done wrong. “What if I had made that same mistake?” Cain wondered. “What would have happened if I had just gotten angrier and angrier and refused to take responsibility for what I had done? I was really angry at God—what if I had just stubbornly kept doing things my own way? And I was getting angrier and angrier at Abel, thinking he was just so perfect. I was so angry that I actually thought about hitting him with a rock. Oh man, that is scary to think about. God was right, I was so angry and that anger might have led me to do some terrible things that would have been wrong. Well, this year’s harvest wasn’t great, but I will get up tomorrow and go back to work again, as usual, and ask God to bless my work instead of figuring that He owes me a blessing. I can’t believe how wrong-headed I was all this time.”

So, how different was that story from what happened in the Bible? And do you know the really great thing? We have a choice whether we are going to live out the story of Cain in the Bible or the story of Cain that I made up for you today. We can choose to sulk, get angry, hurt people, and run away from our problems or we can choose to talk to God, face up to what we have done and why, and not take it out on everyone around us. And we all go through things like this. All of us. No matter how perfect someone seems to be, absolutely everyone goes through times when they don’t trust God, where they get angry at Him and angry at other people because of resentment and jealousy. That anger and that distrust happens, and we can’t stop it from happening, but we can choose how we deal with it when it does happen.

Have you ever read the Psalms? The Psalms are like the most honest poetry ever written. Sometimes the people who wrote the Psalms are just super happy and trusting God and sometimes they are angry and accusing God of betraying them. Sometimes things are going their way and sometimes everything is going horribly wrong. Sometimes they are loving and sometimes they are asking God to kill their enemies and even asking God to bless whoever kills their enemies’ babies, which is super messed up. But that’s the kind of thing that goes through our heads sometimes—well, maybe not the part about killing peoples’ babies. I can’t imagine wanting that to happen and I bet you can’t imagine that either. But the point is that we have all of these emotions inside us and sometimes the things we think are beautiful and sometimes the things we think are very ugly and we would never want anyone to know about it—but the Psalms tell us that everyone has these kinds of things running through their heads sometimes. The Psalms tell us that we don’t have to pretend to always have perfect thoughts, and that we can be honest about those thoughts to God. I mean, if we see them in the Bible, it means that God knows that we all have these sorts of thoughts sometimes. We all get angry. We all want revenge. We all think about things that we would never ever really want to do or have happen. Because the Psalms were written to God, they teach us that God is the One we are supposed to go to when we think these ugly thing. He can handle it. He knows what we are thinking and so the best thing we can do is to stop trying to hide it from Him. If we go to Him with this, He can help us with it. That’s what He wanted to do for Cain, to help him deal with his anger and sinful thoughts.

And so, no matter what it is you are thinking or have done, you can take it to God. You can talk to Him about it and after you are done talking, just listen. Sometimes He will respond and sometimes, He just starts helping you to fix it in quiet ways by changing your mind. Sometimes He will send someone to you from out of the blue who will tell you something that is related to what you talked to God about. So many times, I will wake up in the morning and God will tell me to write something and I won’t know why but then I will get a letter or an email or a message telling me that it was just what they were praying to God about. And the funny thing is that sometimes, He will tell me to write it before they even pray. But He knows that they are going to pray and what they will be praying about. And God will find ways to help you too. Because He loves you.

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.