They tell me I’m too young to understand
They say I’m caught up in a dream
Well life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes
…
All this time I was finding myself
And I didn’t know I was lost
–Wake Me Up Avicii
I think crayons have loose moral standards.
I do not know how it happens, but at night my daughter’s crayons procreate at will with any color they so desire. I distinctly remember buying only the standard 16 color pack, yet in the last year, we now have grown to accumulate a large Tupperware bowl of the waxy menaces. I don’t know how this happens, but she absolutely loves it.
In the mornings, we sit and eat our cereal and soon after, the princess book comes out. If you have a daughter, you most likely already know this book. It is like a foot thick, has a million stickers and contains several dozen outlines for each type of princess the minds of Disney have conceived. While Jack Jack and I chase each other, Hads sits on the table and examines each princess with a careful gaze, like a sculptor trying to precisely chisel a masterpiece. Then, with a determined sigh, she proclaims what is needed, grabs a particular crayon and proceeds to coat said princess in a rush of pink wax.
It is interesting to me because the picture was already complete. It already was a princess. But with a flash of imagination, the picture becomes more than it was. It was complete, but not finished.
I think about that a lot of times as I wander around.
This place, our city, our homes, our world is complete in one sense and yet not at all.
Sheri and I are contemplating some huge decisions right now in our life as a family. In one sense, we are already complete, we have our little family with our jobs and roles. We live a not too rich, not too poor life and it is great.
But God keeps giving us more crayons.
God keeps whispering little songs and thoughts and dreams into our lives and I would love to ignore them. But the possibility of new colors to use and new portraits to paint are so heavenly seductive. There is something to God, to His idea of what makes everything better, that is so disarmingly irresistible.
Especially the big stuff.
When you have the big dream and sit back and think, but if it fails, we will look like fools…
Those are the big ones that I love. I live my life trying to negate any uncomfort. Then I get those Holy Moments every so often, where I have a glimpse of what could be around the bend. What might be in store for us. Where this road might go. It so compelling, so life giving, so precious that to say it above a whisper at night would seem to make it fade or die somehow. Those things you dream about, but only ever say once in a long while with close friends late at night.
I love those kind of things. Not because I love the dramatic, but because I love good stories.
The other day, Sheri and I were talking about some of the big decisions we are facing and I had this random thought that I asked her. “If you saw you in a movie right now, what would you want the character to do?” It was a little like asking, “what do you think the audience is cheering you on towards?” I don’t know for sure, but I think that the question was not put in my head by me. I feel that way, because since that night, we have talked a lot differently about everything.
I still do not know where were are headed, but it is an uncertainty that does not scare me as much. We still wonder, but not as those who have no hope…
Because all around us is a world that needs my gifts and Sheri’s gifts and my neighbor Fred’s gifts and my Mother-in-law’s gifts and YOUR gifts.
We have this world, God has made it, but left some of the coloring to us. Why make a human race with unfathomable creativity, if we were not meant to use it for His Good?
Each of us has unique roles in this life. We see needs that others may not. For example, something that has been bothering me lately is that the number one cause of of preventable death in this world is Diarrhea. That is not a joke. 1 Billion people, a seventh of the world’s population has no access to clean drinking water. They must drink water wherever they can find it, which contain diseases, which give them Diarrhea, which dehydrates them, which makes them drink more water…and on and on the cycle goes until they lose so much that they simply die. The kicker is that to give someone the ability to have clean water for a year is estimated at $1 (bloodwatermission.com). ONE. FREAKING. DOLLAR. I spent three years worth of clean water this morning at Starbucks. The current U.S. government estimation is that it would take about $10 billion dollars to solve the water crisis, roughly the amount that American’s spent last year on ice cream…
I have the crayons, but I don’t color with them.
Or in this city, as in every city, we have an epidemic of fatherlessness, whether by actual absentee dads or by dads that are just empty shells at home. I see the effect of this all the time in my job and work hard to stop it, and yet last night at my house, I was that dad. I was on my phone looking up and reading all sorts of things that do not matter. My son kept trying to climb up on my lap and I was so annoyed, “Jack, just chill out buddy!” The right thing dawns on me slowly sometimes… Finally, I put him on my lap, overly frustrated about it, and just gave him a look like, What! What is so important! Without a hesitation, he held my face (he is 1 and a half, so this was amazing) and once he had my full attention, he put his hands on his lap and just started talking to me in his made up baby language for several minutes about something particularly important. He then clapped when he was done and went on his way.
I sat there, large, shameful tears running down my face.
There are so many things in this life that we see but don’t see.
There are needs in our city, our lives and our families that we all feel inadequate to meet. We all feel like, “But, what could I do?”
But most of us have a dollar.
Most of us can sit and listen.
Most of us can use our phones less. Especially at traffic lights…I can’t count how many times the light turns red and all the parents heads go down to their phones and not to the kids in their car. The text message is not that important.
We have the crayons God gave us. He wants us to use them so that He can give us even more. Because that’s what He put you Here for.
Let’s Color…
Chasing The Wild Beast 