The Sovereignty of God Explained by an Eight-Year-Old

We’re big sovereignty of God people.

That means that we believe that God is in control of all things and does all things for our good and His glory. This doesn’t make us super spiritual or holier than thou. It mostly makes us people who like simple explanations for hard questions. Let me give you some examples. 

Kid: “Why is Daniel taller than you but you’re older?”

Parent: “Because that’s the way God determined for it to be.”

Kid: “Why did God make Balaam’s donkey talk?

Parent: “Because that was God’s plan.”

Kid: “Why do babies drink from their mommies RIGHT THERE (pointing for effect)?”

Parent: (rather hastily) “Because that’s the way God designed it.”

If the kids ever attempt a follow up to their question, we just lower our voices, look serious and paraphrase Isaiah 55:8-9. “Well, the Bible says that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways, so….there you go.” 

Sovereignty and adoption

We have found that it is particularly important to explain the circumstances of our kids’ adoptions in light of God’s sovereignty. Because their stories involve abandonment, we try to be very careful about how we speak about that aspect of their lives. We tell them that, for reasons we don’t know, their biological parents couldn’t keep them.We skip the abandonment part and say that they were brought to a place where they waited until we came for them. We stress that God planned for them to be Froislands and that we worked really hard to make them part of our family. We choose our words very carefully. You can imagine my surprise then, when this issue was brought up in a causal conversation with my eight-year-old daughter and her friend. 

The conversation

I had been teaching in my younger kids’ co-op class and was busy cleaning up afterward when I heard the conversation. I didn’t hear the beginning, but my mama radar went to red alert when I heard these words: “Well when you were in China your mom gave you away because she didn’t want you.” Alarm bells went off in my head. I whipped around and looked at my daughter’s face which had a thoroughly confused expression on it. She was repeating her friend’s words to herself with a questioning tone: “My mom didn’t want me?” I could tell she was trying to figure out why her friend was saying that I, her mom, didn’t want her. Not wanting her friend to follow up with an explanation, because she clearly did not know what she was talking about, I plunged in with a conversational cannonball. Me: “What she means is that your biological mom couldn’t keep you. You know though that I, your mom, always wanted you.”

The follow-up

Her friend agreed and then the wisdom of Solomon fell on this one. In the sweetest voice she said, “Yeah and Jesus always meant for you to be adopted. Then you could come here and we could be friends!” The word “friends” was punctuated by the friend throwing her arms around my daughter and giving her a big hug. “I was wrong,” I thought, “she really does know what she’s talking about.” Sovereignty explained by an eight- year-old. I couldn’t have done better.