His Encourgement: When God overlooks ignorance

“Yup! Me! Help!”

My heart seemed to melt at his sheer adorableness. (Is adorableness a word?) At the same time, I knew something very important that this adorable little boy did not know. But at not yet two-years-old, I had to think of some way explain it to him so he would understand without crushing his joy.

“Thank you for helping, but we need to wait until the tomatoes are ready. These are not ready yet. We wait until the tomatoes are red.”

“Rehd? Yup!” Before I could stop him, Peanut promptly plucked two tiny tomatoes from the potted plant. “Here, Mama!”

Again, he was so happy! He was so excited to be helpful that he did not understand that plucking green tomatoes is not ideal. Fortunately, I was able to save the rest of the tomatoes on the plant from suffering the same fate. Last night I experimented with breading and frying the two bigger tomatoes so they would not go to waste.

As I thought about this interaction with my son, I realized that we are often very much like him. There is so much that we do not understand, and in our ignorance, sometimes we do things that are not ideal or not exactly according to God’s plan. There are times in each of our lives that our zeal gets in the way. Or we try to do things the way we think would work best instead of listening to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Or we just do the best we can in the moment, but later on after maturing more in our own relationship with the Lord, we look back on our words or actions with a little bit of a grimace.

Yet God, in His infinite love, mercy, and wisdom has continued to use us flawed, sinful, ignorant people as His messengers.It reminds me of the passage in Acts 17:30. “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked…” Like my son, we can be ignorant, completely unaware that our words or actions are not in complete harmony with the Lord. Like a parent, the Lord often will find a way to work with what we have done, to turn it around to His glory and serve His purpose.

But just as I took this opportunity to gently teach my son not to pluck the tomatoes too soon, the Lord also does not want us to remain spiritually ignorant. “…but [God] now commands all men everywhere to repent.” The first step is to acknowledge that we make mistakes, we misunderstand, and we even sin against the Lord by breaking His law. (1 John 3:4) And from that place of repentance, the Lord wants us to learn, grow, and mature in Him.

Friend, let us grab ahold of childlike joy and always continue growing in the Lord.