Nutty Bars

Why is it that I learn more through my children than I’m willing to bet that they learn from me? Or better clarified, I mean more good things learned, because I’m sure that I unintentionally teach a lot of bad habits to the whippersnappers. My youngest is 4 years old so maybe by the time he goes off to college and I’m misplacing my dentures, I will have gained some wisdom. Hopefully.

Speaking of Will, when he is playing Mario on the Nintendo DS, he’s totally gone…the mental space shuttle has stopped by and transported him completely to another planet. The house could burn down around him and he might come to enough to ask us to turn up the AC.  He’s with Mario bouncing around, squashing turtles, climbing up and sliding down poles, swimming and zapping the bad guys with fire balls. I told a buddy of mine how great a babysitter the DS is and he went out and bought one for his 4 year old son. Oh, please, I don’t want to hear how it’s ruining his mind and we should play with him and read him books. We do all that but HE’S 4 YEARS OLD and has lots more energy than we do and occasionally we have other things that need to get done. Yah, Nintendo, we love you!

Anyway, Will was lost in Mario’s world the other night while we were reading the Scarlet Pimpernel. Sandra opened up a Nutty Bar (you know the old school chocolate and peanut wafer bars) and at the first crackling sound of the cellophane wrap, we looked up and Will was standing right in front of Sandra with a big smile on his face. He was so lightning fast I don’t think anyone saw him cross the 10 ft from his chair to the couch. It was a Star Trek kind of thing. He was just suddenly there with Mario tossed aside like last week’s bachelor. His ears are evidently trained to the sound of a Nutty Bar which is a good thing to know. I’ll have to start opening mine in the pantry far from his ear shot.

Wouldn’t it be great if our ears were as fine-tuned to the sound of God’s voice? Then and this is a big THEN, we responded to what we heard? But an inherent danger lies in waiting on God’s voice and I’ve learned it firsthand…distinguishing between God’s voice and our own. Sometimes we hear a voice, act on it and then later after the fall out of a very bad decision realize that it couldn’t have been God’s voice after all. It was our own voice; a voice of selfish desire; a voice of fear; any voice that you can put your own name to that leads you to a decision that was just plain not smart. We bring God into these decisions to justify them so we can do what we want to do or not do what we are too scared to do. God is wise and his knowledge of us is so perfect that He may not “speak” to us at all, aware that our antennas are not dialed in good enough to Him. Instead, in His most gracious way of trying to make sure we don’t miss the point, He may pile up around us all the evidence, signs and tools we need to make the right decisions. I think the makers of Bruce Almighty were mocking us in the scene in which Jim Carrey’s character drove around asking God for a sign and the entire time he was following a truck carrying road signs. We ask a lot for God to speak to us. He may be. Just look around and stop saying that you haven’t heard God say this or that; instead what do you see God doing in this or that situation? What are other people saying? What are they doing? We aren’t suppose to walk by sight, but maybe there are times in which God has to show us instead of telling us, because seeing is believing…if we open our eyes.