Curious beyond her years

I will never really understand my husband's choice of reading material for our daughter, but it seems to work for both of them. It's what allowed her to be able to say that she'd read all of The Lord of the Rings "except the appendices" by the time she was 3 1/2. I suppose that's some sort of badge of honor.

Right now he is reading her a children's version (actually, probably more a teens' version) of Canterbury Tales. I would be scandalized but it's pretty tame, really. The Miller's Tale was censored quite a bit, which set my mind at ease. He last read it to her about a week or so ago.

Yesterday in the car, she said to him (out of the blue): "Daddy, will the world really be destroyed by water at the end of time?"

He was surprised by the question. As I would've been. "What, honey?"

"Will the world really be destroyed by water at the end of time? Like in the story you were reading me the other day."

"You mean Canterbury Tales? The Miller's Tale?"

"Yep. That one," she said.

"Well, honey, that was kind of a trick in the story. One character was trying to fool another one. But that's really good that you noticed what was happening. And you know, honey, the world will never be completely destroyed by water because God promised after the flood that He would never do that."

"Noah's ark, Daddy?"

"Yes, sweetie. Remember the rainbow that came, and how God promised he would never destroy the world with water?"

"Mm-hmm. I do. But Daddy, where was Jesus during the flood, because sometimes I see a cross on top of the ark in the Bible story books."

And she's right. There is a cross on one of the arks in a Bible story book we have. We chose not to inundate her already hard-working mind with the idea of the ark as the prototype of the church building, and the timelessness of the cross, etc. I think it was a wise move.

Poor kid. I'd like to just get her not-even-four-year-old-psyche past the idea that the world will be destroyed at all!