The other night I was sitting in the recliner talking with my husband about the day’s events. As I glanced over at the end table between us I noticed a layer of dust in the lamp light. My initial thought was “yet, another task to add to tomorrow’s list”. However, as I listened to Jeff, I noticed an impression in the dust. It was a foot print…a rather small foot print…and the toes were pointed toward the window. It dawned on me that it was our three-year-old, Leif’s foot print. Suddenly the irksome dust turned into a memory recording medium.
As I postulated how such a foot print could have been made I remembered the previous day’s excitement at daddy’s arrival home from work. Leif was in the kitchen playing as I prepared supper. Upon hearing our truck pull into the drive he ran into the living room and leapt up into the window to see his daddy’s approach. Jeff opened the front door to Leif’s squeals of delight and a hearty, “Welcome home, Daddy!”
It is an awesome blessing to have a three year old to show me life through his perspective. At his eye level, the world looks different. A daddy coming home is the equivalent of winning the Publisher’s Clearing House. The arrival of winter’s first snow, gives you a reason to dance. Time spent wrestling with your parents after dinner is better than a day at an amusement park. A bed-time story is more exciting than a trip to the movie theatre. A bowl of ice cream is a complete escape, a new toy a marvelous delight. A kind word of encouragement is not only heard but it is taken to heart and recorded in the annals of his mind and displayed in the ear to ear expression of emotion on his face.
We come from our mothers’ wombs meeting life with awe and wonder. Somewhere along the way we become jaded and affected. We are hurt and wounded by other’s words. We are tempted, enticed, and lured away by our own desires. Where do those desires come from? We are not born with a sinful nature, yet as our exposure to this fallen world lengthens day by day, so does our aptitude for sin. Somewhat like how the chances of skin cancer increase with every bad sunburn. Like the Roman writer so aptly says,
“So I find it be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:23-25)
Thanks be to Jesus. He had that three-year-old perspective of life and urged others to have it as well. He said that, “whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” It is by him and through him that we can regain this child like perspective. We can once again meet this life with awe and wonder and, like my three year old longs to see his daddy coming home, we too can eagerly await Jesus’ return.
My husband reminds me often that God gave us parents to rear us and children to finish the job. I know he is right when I am taught such a beautiful lesson as this.
Thank you, God for opportunities for contact with some of your most precious creations: children. Thank you for the reminder to be more like them. Help us to meet life with innocent expectancy, enjoying all that you have blessed us with, and looking forward to your redemptive return.
Dana Jaworski
Love this story!
ReplyDelete