All Christians know this most important analogous relationship:  God is the Father, and we are the Children of God.  It evokes sentimental warm-fuzzy feelings, as it should, but what about the other ways in which God sees us as children?  Most of the time we think of ourselves as generally grown-up, mature, maybe even wise (in our own eyes). 

Nobody can really understand what it is like to be a parent until you actually are a parent.  I am not a parent, but I have come to understand a little bit as I have spent the past two months in the surrogate role.  Living with children everyday is much different than living with adults.  And quite frankly, I am getting a little tired of it.  Maybe it's hit me so hard because I have not been around children much.  I've never done babysitting, and I've never worked a nursery.  I prefer not to deal with other people's children; it makes me a little uncomfortable.  I am perfectly comfortable with my own children, but they are starting to get on my nerves.  I guess it's because I keep expecting them to act more like adults.  They are certainly eager to be seen and treated as grown-up, but they are far from it.  They consistently display selfishness, whininess, laziness, willful disobedience, shallowness, self-centeredness, ungratitude; they talk back, they get angry and frustrated, they yell, they hit and shove.  They do not have wisdom.  So my sister and I run around putting out fires, scolding, and disciplining.  And that is just in one day.  And the next day it repeats, day after day, day in and day out.  It is exhausting!  What particularly frustrates me is when one of them gets in trouble for something, and I scold them and explain to them what they did wrong and why it is wrong, and they listen and understand and desist the action - and then the next day they are doing the very same thing again!  It is like the instruction that I give them is a rock that, though accepted, sinks down and is covered beneath the river of their childish and short-sighted understanding.  Eventually, enough of those rocks will build up into a dam which has some noticeable effect on shaping their understanding, but by that time the parent is covered in gray hairs. 

After the first few weeks, I would just stare in bafflement at their unparalleled abilities to exercise these immature traits.  How can they keep acting this way when we've told them time and again not to??  And then one day I started to see my own actions toward God reflected in the actions of these children, and understanding hit hard.  As the adult, we tell the children to do something and expect them to obey immediately; and if they don't, we don't like it.  But don't adults do that to God all the time?  Even worse, if we tell our children to do something and they argue with us about it.  This one gets me the most irritated.  The child argues with me from her perspective and her experience.  I can see immediately where she is coming from, and I can also see that she is wrong - she does not have the wisdom and experience that I have to know what I know.  So I try to explain to her, but she will not accept my reasoning.  She does not trust that my understanding is greater than hers, but instead clings to what makes sense to her.  It really frustrates me.  But don't adults act like this toward God all the time?  The Bible says to "trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding," but we put a lot of faith in our own understanding, don't we?  I see the parallel again when I am being annoyed by the childrens' whining.  They complain whenever they have to do chores or anything that is not recreational.  Kaylee especially - it is like the end of the world if she has to empty the dishwasher more than once a day.  "Ugh!  I already did this!"  She is very dramatic.  But Brittain also corners the market on whining.  "This is too hard!  This is no fun!  I don't want to!"  It annoys me because I know that these are such simple tasks - we're barely asking them to do anything - but they think it is the biggest inconvience to their lives.  I think to myself "how can they be so immature?"  But don't adults act like this toward God too?  We don't like to do things that are hard, that are inconvenient.  That illustration rolls up into the final example, which is ungratitude.  This one really takes the cake for me.  These kids haven't seen anything of the world.  They have no idea how good they've got it.  But instead of being grateful for the blessings they do have, they take them for granted and instead spend all their time pining after the things they want.  Always more.  As if they just deserve all that.  If Witney and I decide to make a new dish for dinner - something different, more exotic - the kids come to the dinner table and complain about how this doesn't look good, doesn't taste good, they don't want to eat it (which I personally find a little insulting to the chef) instead of being grateful that they have a full meal to eat for dinner.  If we decide to take Kaylee out to dinner for a special evening, she gets all excited - but if she asks to go to the mall afterwards and we tell her no, her evening is completely ruined.  Instead of being grateful that she gets to go out at all, she is now moping that she doesn't get to go to the mall like she wanted to.  Being with children is so much different than being with adults!!     

Ok, thanks for listening to me vent my parental frustrations.  That was not the original point of this post, but I guess I just needed to get it out.  The original point was to say that this understanding of the parent/child relationship has put a whole new perspective on how I see myself.  Sometimes it makes me want to ask God how he can stand to be around me if I am really this frustrating all of the time.  Sometimes I don't see how the parents can stand it.  And I guess if kids were just selfish little miscreants all of the time...but they're not, they just need training.  A lot of it.  But there is love there too.  And when I hear Savannah call my name and see her come running into my arms with joy on her little face, then I understand. 

I went stargazing in the early hours of yesterday morning.  As I stepped out of my car into the silence, I was awe-struck at the beauty of the night.  And how can I describe it to you?  I can tell you that the sky was velvet studded with jewels.  That it was like millions of glittering diamonds.  I lay back on my car to drink in the sights, and I began to reflect on how much beauty there is all around us.  And I wondered how often people take the time to really see it.  It seems like the enjoyment of nature has become relegated to the level of hobby or specialty interest – something that is outside of daily life and you must go out of your way to do.  But have you ever just stopped and looked up at the sky on a summer day to appreciate how vividly the blue contrasts with the trees in bloom?  Or noticed the bright colors of the wildflowers on the side of the road?  This planet was made for us to live in, and I think it is a shame that people have become so removed from the natural world that they no longer see it or live in it, because they are too busy living in the man-made world. 

I am not saying that man has not created good things.  I, for one, am a big supporter of indoor plumbing and central heating.  I look around and see everything from architecture to car design made into an art and designed with an eye for beauty.  People have the desire and capacity to create things of both beauty and functionality, and they have done so to our benefit.  But sometimes, I look around and see that man has created so much that it is now possible to live in the bubble of our artificial world.  People now spend the majority of their lives inside buildings - either sterile office environments where they are consumed by man-made paperwork, or sterile houses where they are absorbed in television, internet, and other multi-media entertainments.  In these artificial worlds we are masters of our own universe, controlling even our climates and our lighting, and we surround ourselves with all manner of stuff that speaks of man’s great achievements and triumphs in science, technology, etc.  We sit in our bubbles and idolize ourselves and ponder whether or not there could really be a God.     

At this point I think people start to lose touch with reality.  The longer we stay cooped up in the world of our making, the place where we are in complete control, we start to think of ourselves as larger than life.  I think it is easier to see God as irrelevant when we remove ourselves from His world. But the moment we step back into that world, we get a different perspective.  All it takes is a few minutes under the immense night sky to make us realize how small we are on this earth.  All it takes is looking out into the vastness of space to make us see how insignificant we are.  All it takes is one natural disaster for us to realize that we aren’t in control.  It is kind of a reality check, and this is one of the many reasons I prefer being out of doors.  It always makes me feel grounded, like I am getting back to my roots, or like I am connected to the earth.  Not to mention that the whole landscape of the world is spectacular.  There is so much that is worth taking the time to see, but so much that we fail to see every day.  It’s like we’ve traded one world for the other.  And though I do appreciate the comforts that man has created, I never want them to overshadow the joy and perspective that is gained from stepping outside and remembering who we really are.    

There is probably nothing more embarrassing than gender identity mix-ups.  It sort of hits right at the heart of who you are as a person.  I’ve only been mistaken for a man once in my life.  But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, once is enough.  In her defense, the situation was entirely circumstantial.  This little old lady could not have stood more than 5’3” and was hunched over at the checkout counter of the department store when I came up behind her to stand in line.  There was some sort of complication with her purchase and it was taking longer than normal.  I guess she must have seen my silhouette in her peripheral vision and knew someone was in line behind her, because after a few minutes of delay she turned approximately 30 degrees to her right, and said to me over her shoulder without even looking at me “I’m sorry that this is taking so long, sir.”  Then she turned back and hunched over the counter again.  Even I concede that this was an honest mistake.  Fine, I’m tall, I admit it.  But mistake or not, it doesn’t change the fact that the words were out there, and I had to take them.  The clerk behind the counter just stared at me in a sort of mute apology.  She could obviously tell that I was a woman.  I just stared at the old lady, stunned.  I didn’t even bother to correct her.  I didn’t want to take the time to go through a conversation where she would say “I’m sorry I thought you were a man.”  But I definitely felt the dent that it put in my womanhood, although it has long since been repaired.  

But even the one small incident stung, and it makes me feel for people who have their gender come into question on a daily basis.  Can you imagine?  I knew someone like this in high school.   When I was in 10^th grade I went to regional band clinic and I noticed a girl there from another city who also played the clarinet.  Or I assumed she was a girl because she had long hair.  But when I first got a good look at her face I decided that she must be a guy who just had long hair, or else she was a really ugly girl.  Over the next two days of the clinic, every time I looked at this person I changed my opinion on what their gender was – because I just couldn’t tell!  I never did decide, and for the next two years of high school I continued this debate with myself every year when I saw this person at the regional band clinic.  Finally in my senior year I decided that it must be a girl because she showed up in a skirt for our regional performance.  I felt bad for the train of my thoughts, even though I knew that honestly it couldn’t be helped.  And I wondered if that was an issue that she often had to deal with.      

It’s amazing how many places we can find to count our blessings.

He left quietly, like a star blinking out in the sky
and no one else noticed.

But I did.

My tribute will be to honor him
which is proper and good,

A substitute for affection I would show if I could.

I will pretend that he hears my inner cry
because I would give anything if he could know

That he was a man I loved.

When I was little I used to wish that I could live in a place where it was summer all the time.  Warm weather forever...who needs all those Januarys?  As I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the brilliance of the changing seasons.  Too fickle to appreciate a static climate for long, I and most people I know always look forward to the day the weather will be changing.  It usually doesn't matter what it is changing to; we're just always ready for something different.  And although I have always been a staunch supporter of warm weather, in very recent years I have found myself exhibiting more anticipation for the cooler months.  Especially the fall months.  Normally I attribute this to the anticipation of the holidays, and it fascinates me how the cooling of the weather can elicit this response in the general population.  We're conditioned.  I always respond to nature, but this season it is especially plucking at my heartstrings.  Fall has come early to Oklahoma, and every time I step outside - whether it is in the crisp days or the dusky evenings - I can just feel the magic in the air.  Like something exciting is about to happen, or is being brought in on the winds.  I can't begin to describe it. 

So I just look in awe and praise God for the splendor of his creation.  The overwhelming beauty it presents for us, the balm it can be for us, the playground it provides for us.  It is wrapped into our souls, and is just one more evidence that points toward the existence of a God who loves us.