further theological adventures with children

Bedtime the other night:

My seven year old: "Why did the snake tell Adam and Eve that they'd be like God?"
(Note: this is completely out of the blue--we've just finished praying a completely standard bedtime prayer along the lines of thank-you-for-a-good-day-and-give-us-good-dreams).
Me: Well, the snake was trying to get them to disobey. He had reasons of his own.
7YO: I don't like him.
Me: Good. You're not supposed to.
7YO: But the Bible says that we're supposed to love our enemies.
Me: Oh. It means our human enemies. The people we think are our enemies. Satan's a different category altogether.
7YO: So we're supposed to . . .
Me: Well, God loves us even though we sin. And those people that we think are our enemies, God loves them, even when they sin, and they're being mean to us, and God wants us to remember to see each other the way he sees us and to love each other.
7YO: (considers) So does God love Satan?
Me: um . . . Rob!

(gotta love being married to the pastor)

I really didn't mean to drop off the face of the earth

I've been busy with a great variety of good summer craziness, and then my computer got this Trojan Horse . . . will be without regular internet (or computer at all--I can't even log in) for the forseeable future . . .

Mongreloid: Happy Birthday, USA!

No, I'm not Dutch, English, Scottish, German or Swedish--though I can trace ancestors back from all those places. I'm not knowingly descending from any former slaves--but I know I wouldn't be the first white girl to be surprised on that score, and I'd be proud to have that stream represented in my blood lines. I can trace my ancestry back to 1640 and New Amsterdam, before it became New York. I need to go at least four generations back in any direction to get a first genration anything; all of my great grandparents were natural born US citizens. I'm married to a man who can trace his descent through a US president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. This is the land of my heritage. I'm proud to be American.

And if our country doesn't get everything right, I'm proud that we get it a long sight better than most anywhere else on the face of the planet. I'm thankful to God that I live in a country that is committed to the principles of freedom and rule of law, however much we may squabble about the best way to carry them out.

I love the Fourth of July. I love bright colors and loud booms. I'm not so fond of the marches of John Philip Sousa, but that probably has more to do with a high school band director who was over fond of them than with the marches themselves.

This is the place I belong to. Me and my children and parents and grandparents and generations dead now. This is the land whose history I know, whose faults and accomplishments I can claim a piece of. This is my family, my country, my ground, my birthright, my responsibility. Happy 232nd birthday, United States. May God bless America.