Parenting is packed with challenges. Who among us has answers to the questions children ask?

"Why can't I have another puppy?"
"But you got married when you were eighteen. Why can't I?"
"Daddy, what is Viagra?"

Such questions would cause a sage to stammer. They pale, however, compared to one a child asks on a trip. In a comprehensive survey conducted by Lucado and Friends (I interviewed a couple of people in the hallway), I determined the most dreaded question in parentdom. What is the single query hated most by moms and dads? It's the one posed by the five year old on the trip, "How much farther?"

Give us dilemmas of geometry and sexuality, just don't make a parent answer the question, "How much farther?"

It's an impossible question. How do you speak of time and distance to someone who doesn't understand time and distance? The novice parent assumes the facts will suffice, "Two hundred and fifty miles." But what do miles mean to a pre-K kid? Nothing! You might as well have spoken Yiddish! So the child asks, "What is two hundred and fifty miles?" At this point you're tempted to get technical and explain that one mile equals 5280 feet, so two hundred and fifty miles equals  one million three hundred thousand feet. But four words into the sentence, and the child tunes you out. He sits quietly until you get quiet and then asks, "How much farther?"

Sound familiar? It might. Jesus has said the same to us. Just prior to his crucifixion, he told his disciples that he would be leaving them. "Where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later"(John 13:36).

Such a statement was bound to stir some questions. Peter spoke for the others and asked, "Lord, why can't I follow you now?"(v.37).

See if Jesus' reply doesn't reflect the tenderness of a parent to a child:"Don't let your hearts be troubled. TRUST IN GOD, and trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father's house; I would not tell you this if it were not true. I am going there to prepare a place for you ... I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may be where I am going"(John 14:1-3).

Reduce the paragraph to a sentence and it might read: You do the trusting and I'll do the taking."

All of his words can be reduced to two: TRUST ME. "Don't let you hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust in me"(v.1).