i was just thinking about my daughter, liesl — who’s now 11 years old. and i remembered something she said once when she was about 3 years old. we were sitting at the dinner table, talking about something-or-other, and “jesus” came up. i mean, not as a swear word; but someone said something about jesus. liesl had been following the conversation, and i wondered if she had any idea what we were talking about. i asked her, “liesl, do you know who jesus is?” she smiled and said, “jesus makes no more owies.”

she’ll have plenty of years to learn about the problem of evil — actually, middle school seems to be teaching her that fairly quickly.

but hearing something like that from your kid is like catching the scent of a stargazer lilly when you weren’t expecting it.