One more lesson from a roadtrip

On Sunday when we came home from our roadtrip, Lori, Oleg, Oksana and I stopped at a store much like a Super-Walmart and went on a search to find a “souvenir” of sorts for Oleg and Oksana’s three-year-old son, Yan. Oleg had promised Yan that he would bring him back something “big.” In the end we had to decide between a ninja sword and big plastic truck. I opted for the ninja sword (because everyone knows that ninja swords can easily be turned into pirate swords and pirates are the best thing ever) but Oksana brought up a very good point, that Yan already had a sword and he did not have a truck. So we headed to the checkout armed with a couple of sodas and one very large truck. This wasn’t just any truck. It had a bright yellow huge claw arm that could be turned a full 180 degrees and could pick up things twice its size, ginormous monster truck wheels, people in the driver’s seat and a surround-sound stereo. Okay, well, maybe not a surround-sound stereo, but you could probably install one if you wanted. There was plenty of space for it.

Today we stopped by the Magdych’s for a visit, to look at pictures from our trip, and I noticed the truck sitting on the floor in the living room. I asked Yan if he liked his truck. He said he did. But Yan was busy playing with something else. What, you ask, could be better than a giant yellow truck with cool accessories, especially when you’re three? The answer, my friends, is a stick. Yan had discovered an eight inch stick outside and had decided that this was better than the truck.

I am certainly not a parent (I say certainly because I can already hear the chorus of “That’s for sure’s” “I’ll say’s,” and “That’ll be the day’s” coming from a few offices at Northwoods and the bedrooms of various friends of mine) but I imagine this situation is much like the Christmas Eve that Dad spends 8 straight hours putting a bicycle together only to find that Johnny would rather play with the packaging instead. (If I ever have kids, they’re all getting refrigerator boxes and Styrofoam peanuts for Christmas, because experience has shown me that this is the all-time greatest gift.)

What can you do with a stick? Not much. You can break it, poke someone’s eye out, maybe eat it if you’re really desperate, but not a whole lot more than that. I’ve been reading through Numbers every night and I read chapter 16 recently. In it, some of the Israelites are rebelling against Moses and ultimately God because they refuse to follow Moses to the Promised Land and would rather go back to Egypt. They call Egypt the “land of milk and honey,” the same phrase used by God to describe the Promised Land. How soon they forgot 400 years of burning sand and back breaking labor, slavery to the Egyptians. Their rose-colored glasses enabled them to see a fantastical five-star hotel rather than the reality of a prison camp. God had something so much better in mind for them. He offered to let them exchange their twigs for trucks, but they decided to keep playing “Pick up Sticks” in the dust. They never got the chance to go to the real land of milk and honey.

I understand Yan entirely. I’ve often thought that my stick was better than God’s car. There’s been so many times that I’ve known God’s way was better, but I thought that mine was more fun, more productive, more time efficient. I’ve sat at the edge of the sink hole in Lake Jackson adamantly arguing with God that this must be better than the Grand Canyon. I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon, but I tell God that I’m sure it can’t be any bigger than this hole we have off Highway 27. How much better my life would be if I’d just quit insisting on having the driver’s seat all the time. The weather’s nice in Colorado this time of year and Lake Jackson’s full of run-off.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts…”

Isaiah 55:8-9