Toys R Us Faith?

If you are of an age, you will remember a wonderland of toys called Toys R Us. When I was a child, there were two toy stores in the city near us. One was in the rich section of town and I never went in there. The other was downtown and when I first went in there, it was literally underneath another store. The effect was as if you were shopping in someone's basement.

We didn't get toys often. So in that "I want my kids to have better than I had it" good old American dream, our boys had quite a few. Bunny and I did our share, but the real giver of toys was their Granddaddy Wilson. I always suspected when I was a child that he loved my toys at least as much as I did, but by the time I had children of my own, there was no doubt in my mind that he loved the toys he bought them maybe more than they did.

There was a routine to it normally. It was called "payday." When my father got his check, that Friday he would take the boys to Toys R Us and buy them each a toy. And then there were the "make it up to you" toys. If something went wrong - maybe they got in trouble with their parents or their grandmother, my father would sneak them off to Toys R Us and "make it up to them" by buying them something. No wonder the theme song for the store was "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid."

It's a pretty horrible parenting style, frankly.

And yet there are sometimes that we look up to our Father God when things don't go the way we want them to, and sort of pray for Him to "make it up" to us. Even a casual reader of the New testament can't help but notice that there's a whole lot of suffering that goes on among believers, and a whole lot more that is predicted for those who come after.

Right now, we're going through some trying times. The temptation is to pray for God to swoop in, fix it, and then make it up to us - rewarding us for going through the trial. No, He has something better for us. By leaning on Him, by trusting Him with every care and worry, instead of being compensated for our trouble, we are going to find ourselves becoming conformed more toward the image of Christ Jesus.

Toys wear out. They often break or the batteries die. Sometimes they get lost.

But the effect of God's Holy Spirit working in us will never go away. I want to grow up.