God has an Idea

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend an uplifting and encouraging event hosted by Girls on the Run of Lancaster.  The featured speaker was Molly Barker, founder of GOTR.  It was a fun time of reflection, as many of us relayed stories of how our involvement as coaches in the program has been life-changing, and particularly how the girl participants have been inspirational to us.

Molly ended with the story that I've included below.  I've thought about it several times over the last few weeks.  While I can't quite pinpoint why this story is so meaningful to me, I think that her telling of the story gave me a lot of hope.  Her words resonated with something inside of me, reminding me of the sacred truth that God has carefully and intentionally created each of us with a specific purpose.  And reminding me of the intimacy that we share with our Creator.


Source: Molly Barker's Blog - Wandering Through Nothingness -  Day 12 -  February 19, 2011

Several years ago, I was walking with a young girl in our program.  It was the last day of our Girls on the Run experience together. Her name is Madeline.  She must have been about 9 years old at the time of our conversation.

“How is it Madeline, that you and I ended up together?” I asked.  ”What’s that all about?”

Madeline paused for only a second or two and then responded with the confidence of a person much older (and wiser) than her years would suggest.

“Well, you see it’s like this,” she said.  ”God has an idea…but he has a problem!  He needs to get the idea down to earth.  So what he does…is wrap a body around the idea so it can be sent here to be born.  Now the ideas inside are all really great and all really big and sometimes they are so big, it might take lots of bodies to come together to get the really big idea out.

And that is, of course, how you get your gifts and talents.  They are God’s tools to help you get the idea from inside of your body out…before your body dies.”

This is, without question, the most profound explanation, I’ve heard for the connection between our human and spiritual selves.  I believe Madeline nailed it!