Have I mentioned lately that Sophie is my granddaughter? I got to spend Memorial Day with her and her parents. She has a little wading pool that sprays upward and soaks her. She cackles. She also has a sprinkler attachment that looks like daisies she likes to run through, and she cackles again. She also was playing with bubbles, seeing how many she could make, and then trying to pop them before they hit the ground. “Granddaddy, you want to play bubbles?” she asked me. “I’ll show you how,” she added to encourage me as if I needed any encouragement. So we played bubbles. She cackled again. And then she sat in my lap and just about fell asleep after all the activity. She likes to play with my ear when she does that.
We also exchanged one of the traditional greetings. I said, “Hi, Sweetie Pie.” She replied, “I not a pie; I Sophie.” Verbs are optional. She cackled again. Sophie asserts herself adorably but strongly. She knows who she is. She likes who she is. I think that makes God very pleased.
When the sun started to go down, and it began to get chilly, her mother got her ready to go inside for a bath. I bet she was asleep in five minutes. But before going inside, her mother let her take one more run through the daisy sprinkler, this time without her bathing suit, at Sophie’s request. That girl! Sophie knows who she is and asserts it. “I Sophie.”
Sophie helped me make sense of one of the Old Testament lessons for this week that have always seemed a little harsh to me. It’s the story we Christians typically call the “Fall,” although a Jewish friend once asked me a question that caused me to rethink it: “Who told you it was fallen?” Sophie has made me rethink it, too.
You know the story (Gen. 3:8-15). The man and the woman hear God in the garden and hide because they are ashamed of their nakedness. It is important to note they are not ashamed of their disobedience. God asks a pointed question. “Who told you that you were naked?” In other words, who told you there was something wrong with who you are? If there is such a thing as original sin, I don’t think it’s disobedience. It is a shame, shame in who God has made us to be.
I’m learning again who I am from Sophie. I Granddaddy.
Agape,
Bishop Stacy Sauls
Founder and President