My son, Taras, walked across the room gripping his laptop by the screen so that it dangled at his side, the way a hunter carries his lifeless prey.
Seeing that makes me sad.
Not long ago the laptop was new, clean, and treated like a prize. Now it’s dusty and sticky from countless dinners and sodas, its shiny CPU stickers blackened and peeling. I bought him that laptop and the way he treats it devalues the sacrifices I made to get it for him. But that’s not what makes me sad. What makes me sad is the newer, faster laptop I want to get for him that I can’t. Based on the way he treats his existing gifts, giving him more will only mean mistreatment of things with substantial value.
I feel the familiar heavenly nudge. “Yeah,” I murmur to my heavenly father, “I hear you. That’s totally me.”
I want more than I have: more money, more free time, better health, more energy, etc. And sure, some of it goes back to God’s Kingdom, but to be honest, when I get more, the bulk of it is invested in my kingdom.
The Bible is full of promises about God’s blessing for us, and full of the stories of him blessing his people. If he feels anything like I do for my child*, he wants to spoil the heck out of you and I. But can he? Taras wants a better laptop for better games. I care more about Taras’s real future than I do about his precious computer game worlds that are not real. And even though he wants more and I want to give him more, I’d be a terrible dad if I gave him the tools to destroy himself.
So, how do I treat God’s gifts in a way that he can give me more?
That’s the wrong question. How well I take care of the physical things he’s given me, is only the tiniest consideration. The real question is how I care for what’s most precious to God – his children**. How do I treat God’s children in a way that he can’t resist spoiling me rotten?
Here’s an example: My wife, Megan, has been under the gun trying to get her new book finished. The editor has a short availability window. If Megan misses it, she misses a valuable opportunity. Sometimes she gets a little stressed as her deadline approaches faster than the end of the book. And yet she’ll spend the day taking a lady with a sick child to the doctor, or use her precious writing hours on the phone with battered women, or forgo much needed sleep writing sections of a bible study to help women make sense of God’s word.
I take care of what’s precious to him even when it costs something precious to me.*** In response he makes the most outrageous promise, “Make your top priority God’s kingdom and his way of life, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt 6:33 NTFE)
That’s how we get everything God wants to give us.
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* Matthew 7:9-11 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
** When asked what’s most important, Jesus basically said, love God, love people. Matthew 22:34-40, Luke 10:29-37
*** Doesn’t God want us to have boundaries and good planning? Yes. So we ask the Lord if this project is for us, because people’s needs are seldom convenient and it’s usually easier to rationalize than to obey.
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I took the pic of the Pont Alexandre III Bridge on a visit to Paris.