This last summer, I decided it was time to read the book Margie Asks, Why Do People Have to Die? to my children. I had read it to them four years ago, but everybody is four years older now and would understand it in a different way.
This is the best book that I have ever read for understanding why bad things happen to good/Christian people. That is a very difficult concept for adults, let alone children. It is the story of how some young children that were attending a Christian school lost their mother to cancer. A young friend of the children tries to grapple with why God allowed the young mother of her friends to die and leave them motherless. The girl with all the questions, Margie, has an aunt who takes the time to review how sin entered the universe, and then sets out to explain why God has to allow bad things to happen to good people sometimes. I highly recommend this book for everybody. I am an adult, and was very blessed by it. My children, ages 5, 8 and 11 were as well. The book was written for children, but I’d recommend it to adults too who have struggled with that question as many of us have at one time or other.
As you can imagine, the subject was one that was very pertinent to our family. You see my children had been praying for years and years, “Please, help Uncle Ben get better.” I knew time was getting shorter for my brother, unless a miracle happened, so I decided that we would read this book, because I was hoping that they would have a chance to think about these things before their Uncle Ben passed away. Unfortunately, we had just started the book when he passed away. We went ahead and finished the book. It had a lot more meaning after the fact then it seemed to before the fact.
I am very sad to have recently discovered that it is currently out of print. (The link, I gave above, is for used copies from Amazon.) I hope that it will get reprinted. However there is a New, Easy English version in print, that can be purchased new.
When we read this book a few years ago, we were doing it as part of the God, Creation and Me Kindergarten program. At that time, we made a little model of what it sounded like God’s throne looked like. So after we finished the book, this time, we pulled it out and set it up. Here is a a picture of it, all set up. If you’re curious how we made it. We got all the stuff from a craft store. The pillars were from the cake decorating isle. The bases were from the wood working isle. The cloud is pillow stuffing. The stars were from the gift wrap isle. And I printed the rainbow on the printer. The people are from some old Bible story illustrations.
This is the throne redesigned by G’tums to be what he thought David’s throne must have looked like.
