Why the Picture?

I've been asked why I have the profile picture that I have on The Used Toy Store blog. Well, let me tell you. It is a picture that I love from our family's vacation last summer in Colorado with my wife Chrissy's family. The picture was taken by my wife while Connor and I were setting up camp.

Connor wanted to, "help," set up our tent, and what could be more fun to a 9-year-old boy than pounding tent stakes into the ground with a mallet. As I stood over him watching, waiting, watching, waiting, watching, instructing, waiting, waiting, and waiting even more, I realized that my frustration level was growing. It wasn't until I saw our vacation photos that I realized I was learning a lesson.

I stood above Connor as he attempted a job I could do so much faster and with a much smaller hammer, but he was learning. I stood above knowing the job could be done more efficiently since there were so many jobs needing to be completed for camp to be set. I watched from above knowing that I could do it myself, but isn't it a joy to watch a child learn something new and simple and majestic at the same time?

Now there's one thing about the picture that only I know, and probably only matters to me. The hammer I'm holding while watching was a small one that came from my Granddad's tool box. It is old, and a reminder to me that my Parents and Grandparents had to watch me learn and grow. In so doing, I know now that I made them proud, frustrated, embarrassed, angry, happy, sad, perplexed, and amazed.

I feel that my children teach me loads about how God feels about me. He looks at me from above, knowing that He could do the jobs that need to be done for His Kingdom so much more efficiently, quickly, and with a quality that I can't achieve regardless of my best efforts. God looks from above as I stumble, stammer, and try. I know on my best days God is proud but never amazed. On my worst days I'm sure that God is disappointed, but never dismayed. Through it all, God knows that his child is learning to live.

At the core life is always new and simple and majestic all at the same time. We live. We die. But life has a life of it's own as it hurls toward us, we know that as God watches patiently from above, He allowed another's hammer to pound the nails piercing his One and Only Son so that we have life always.