said eagerly. “Cause He sure wouldn’t have let them if He’d been there. Didn’t they, Mama? Didn’t they?”
Their mother hesitated, and then said carefully, “No, Rufus, we believe that God is everywhere and knows everything and nothing can happen without His knowing. But the Devil is everywhere too-everywhere except heaven, that is-and he is always tempting us. When we do what he tempts us to do, then God lets us do it.”
“What’s tempt?”
“Tempt is, well, the Devil tempts us when there is something we want to do, but we know it is bad.”
“Why does God let us do bad things?”
“Because He wants us to make up our own minds.”
“Even to do bad things, right under His nose?”
“He doesn’t want us to do bad things, but to know good from bad and be good of our own free choice.”
“Why?”
“Because He loves us and wants us to love Him, but if He just made us be good, we couldn’t really love Him enough. You can’t love to do what you are made to do, and you couldn’t love God if He made you.”
“But if God can do anything, why can’t He do that?”
“Because He doesn’t want to,” their mother said, rather impatiently.
“Why doesn’t He want to?” Rufus said. “It would be so much easier for Him.”
“God-doesn’t-believe-in-the-easy-way,” she said, with a certain triumph, spacing the words and giving them full emphasis. “Not for us, not for anything or anybody, not even for Himself. God wants us to come to Him, to find Him, the best we can.”
“Like hide-and-go-seek,” said Catherine.
“What was that?” their mother asked rather anxiously.
“Like hide…”
