Anne of Green Gables

Upon rereading a favorite childhood book of mine, I wonder what my 7-year old self must have thought or imagined the first time reading about Anne. There is quite a bit of depth that I didn't grasp in my young age, which leads me to consider if any of it intrigued me, or if I quickly skimmed over it to get to the "good parts"?

I wonder if L.M. Montgomery was a Christian...
Google has been one of my best friends for a while now.

Well, according to her biography, she married a minister, but turned her back on religion...

From the book itself, there is a slight hinting that church is a required part of life, for purely social reasons, and a boring or unimaginative part at that! The church body wasn't very welcoming to Anne, and Sunday school seemed more like a duty than a joy.

But, anyway, Anne herself, with her seemingly infinite imagination, depicts the child described in the first part of 1 Corinthians 13:11~ "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child..."
Her thoughts are full of JOYFUL life; I admire her relentless idealistic manner.

I wonder if I asked who God was after hearing Anne's response:

"God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth."

Reading this now, I am so humbly struck by the depth of her response. I am once again reminded of the perfect Father that has chosen me.

But I am also saddened by the fact that she said this "promptly and glibly," which means thoughtlessly or insincerely.
That Anne, at age 11, knows these truths about our God, but not the slightest idea of what that means for her.

I pray that our children wouldn't be given just a desensitized knowledge of the truth of God, but a powerful, expressible love of God, which surpasses all knowledge.

I pray that those who read this beautiful book and are captivated by Anne's childish, yet irresistible nature, would be struck even more powerfully by the unchanging, infinite, and eternal nature of our God, characterized by His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

I wonder if my 7-year old self ever had a longing for the love of her Lord, for a taste of His unfailing and unchanging love? And was that want pushed away into the depths of her heart, unnoticed and ignored?

This thought makes my heart break for my 7-year old self, knowing how the ways of the the world, not her loving Savior, shaped her childhood.