My hard work
My son Jacob is almost 3, and for the life of me I have no idea where he picks up some of the things he says. Yesterday, I was in the process of fixing him his favorite lunch time meal, PB&J, when I noticed he had dumped almost all of the toys from his toy box in the living room floor. I went over and pushed them together in a pile next to the box and asked him to please pick them up and put everything back in the box before lunch. You would have thought I asked him to move our house. He started screaming and crying saying, "You help me, you help me". I reminded him I was fixing lunch and he was a big boy and could do it by his self. That's when he dropped the, "But it's HARD WORK daddy" line on me. I was like, "did he just say it was hard work"? How in the world does he even know what that means. He must have noticed it caught me of guard because he kept repeating it over and over. "But it's hard work, it's hard work". He Kept dragging out the hard and work so it was really more like, "Haaaaarrrrd wooorrrk".
My response was like that of any loving parent. I knelt down, looked in him the eye and said with all tenderness, "How do you know what hard work is? You're not even 3 yet. You could have picked these toys up by now if you weren't sitting here crying about hard work. Now pick those toys up."
As Jacob reluctantly picked up his mess and I made my way back to the kitchen, I started to think about the Donald Miller book I had just finished. I was thinking of how that exchange between Jacob and his father was so much like the many exchanges between me and my heavenly father. God lays everything out for me, and yet I still ask for more help. When He withholds His help in the hopes I will do it myself, I sit, cry and use the excuse that it's to hard of work for me to do. I wonder what God thinks when He hears that? I wonder if he feels this strange combination of patience and frustration much like I did with Jacob. I wonder how many things I've missed out on because I used the excuse, "It's hard work daddy"?
My response was like that of any loving parent. I knelt down, looked in him the eye and said with all tenderness, "How do you know what hard work is? You're not even 3 yet. You could have picked these toys up by now if you weren't sitting here crying about hard work. Now pick those toys up."
As Jacob reluctantly picked up his mess and I made my way back to the kitchen, I started to think about the Donald Miller book I had just finished. I was thinking of how that exchange between Jacob and his father was so much like the many exchanges between me and my heavenly father. God lays everything out for me, and yet I still ask for more help. When He withholds His help in the hopes I will do it myself, I sit, cry and use the excuse that it's to hard of work for me to do. I wonder what God thinks when He hears that? I wonder if he feels this strange combination of patience and frustration much like I did with Jacob. I wonder how many things I've missed out on because I used the excuse, "It's hard work daddy"?
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