God's Spatula

The descriptor used by Priscilla in this morning’s study group has stayed with me.  Does God really have a spatula, ever at the ready to address wrong-doing with a good swift whack to the unsuspecting but oh-so-deserving behind?

Is Hell the preserve of those for whom no amount of spatula whacking will do?

Is God really just like my Grandma back in the day when she was a mom and could and would chase a recalcitrant child through the house for a ‘good’ switching?

Years ago, I heard Bill Cosby do a fabulous routine about how his own parents became different people – people he did not and could not recognize from his own youth – when they became grandparents.  It was so funny because it was so true.

Maybe that’s how it is with God.  Maybe God is actually not a parental figure at all.  Maybe what God is more like than a parent is a grandparent, whose spatula-wielding days are long, long past.