Why I Play With Toys

Visit my office and you will find a number of toys.  [Do you know any pastors?  Visit their office.  If they don’t have toys, get them some.]

My toys are ready for play, and sometimes they help relieve stress, break the ice, pass the time, but mostly they are reminders.

Reminders of what?

Reminders that life is to be enjoyed; to be filled with joy.

You might ask, “You need to be reminded of that?”

Don’t we all from time to time?

Even the most optimistic of us gets rocked off our center occasionally.  And if “occasionally” starts feeling like “frequently” or “permanently”, we’ll begin to imagine joy as a distant goal or an unattainable dream.

Enter the Weeble.

“Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.”

I just love this toy.  Push it around.  Give it a flick.  It will spin and teeter, but sometimes there is truth in advertising, the thing won’t lay down.  You can’t knock it over.

I need that reminder every once in a while.

Being a Christian doesn’t mean life will be easy or stress-free.  In many ways, it makes life harder.  I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his understanding of “costly grace“.  Or the student ridiculed for being “churchy”.  Or the family ostracized for following a way that departs from extended family norms.  No we are not promised a life free from difficulty, but we are promised a companion for the journey.  We are promised we will never be alone.  We are promised there can be no separation between us and the One who loves us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  – Romans 8:35-39

We might wobble, but we won’t fall down.

Remember the Weeble the next time it feels like the world is out to knock you down.  Don’t have one of your own?

Drop by anytime and give mine a push.

Life is better together,
Shawn