A couple of nights ago, I was out in the dusk playing with my son. He ran around with my football and tried his best to throw it to me. Then, as any little boy would want, he begged me to throw it to him. I tried to lob the ball, skip it to him, or any way that would help him catch it; however, he is just not developmentally ready to catch a football.
Well, the inevitable happened, footballs, as you see every weekend watching the sport on television, take interesting bounces. This one clanged him pretty hard in the ribs. He paused, looked at me, stuck his lip out, and then began to cry. I motioned for him to come to me, which he did running, and gave him a hug. That simple attention was all he needed. In a flash, he quit crying and took off running again. He turned around and wanted that football tossed to him. It really was getting dark and cooling off; so I said no and took him inside. He screamed worse than he did when he took the nose of the football into his ribs.
After his bath, Bible story, and a couple of songs to put him to bed, I sat down with my Bible and opened it to continue 1 Corinthians. Chapter 12 and 13 really went well together; so I read them. It as amazing how the events of the evening with my son paralleled what Goad was teaching me in my devotions.
Chapter 12 deals with spiritual gifts and chapter 13 is the famous "love chapter" of the Bible. Paul argues, in chapter 12, that we all have spiritual gifts bestowed upon us by God and that we are uniquely positioned to accomplish His will with those gifts. Verses 11 and 18 tell us those gifts are "as He wills" and "just as He pleased." He is in control and gives us exactly what we need. That realization is vital for us to remember as we go through life. We have exactly what God wants us to have. What we may view as bad for us, in the eyes of God, is precisely what we need at that moment.
As Paul concludes his argument about gifts, he does so, in verse 31 by saying: "yet I show you a more excellent way." In other words, desiring gifts and using them are great; however, there is something better. Then, we turn to the love chapter. Here is my take on how these two work together -- gifts then love. God gives us gifts out of love but we may not view it that way. Chapter 13 describes love for us, but the only person that could ever reach that standards is Jesus Christ. He alone perfectly exemplified love.
I drew my son close to me when he was in pain from the football for the same reason that I upset him by heading inside -- LOVE. Love will get you through the pain in life because you realize that God has a purpose and a plan for everything. For instance, right now as I type, my daughter is whacking herself in the head with a long wooden spoon. Why? She is developing her motor skills -- that's good for her -- but sometimes pain comes along with maturity.
Step back and learn from children as their simple lives show us the complexity of our own. We protect them out of love but push them, sometimes leading to pain (i.e. falling off a bike), because we know what is best for them. If we are that way to our children, just picture how much that applies to our Heavenly Father. As the song says: "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus."
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