Most mornings I get to see a picture of what pure joy looks like! Our youngest two have a tendency (one that I dislike) to get up fairly early in the morning. It is very common for the two youngest to both be up by 6:30. I am typically up so I get to have some time to hang out with Anaya and Ty in the mornings. The experience of pure joy happens when mommy gets up! As soon as they hear her voice Anaya our two year old goes tearing down the hallway giggling and squealing with shouts of joy and jumps into her moms arms. Ty, while not quite to the point of running, also heads down the hallway crawling as fast as his body will allow him giggling and squealing with shouts of joy until he gets to mommy's arms! It is a great experience to witness and it is an appropriate response for the one who loves them, provides for them, gave birth to them, takes care of them, plays with them, and on and on I could go about why it is an appropriate response.
A couple mornings ago the same scene began to unfold with mommy as Anaya tore down the hallway to jump into her arms. Ty, as usual, also began the journey with excitement, working on getting those legs and arms moving as fast as possible, but in the journey down the hallway something happened. Something was on the ground between him and mom, a play cell phone, and it was successful in distracting Ty from getting to mommy even though a play cell phone can't even begin to compare to mommy. Instead of finishing the journey by falling into mom's arms, he stopped and played with the cell phone instead. He got distracted, and ultimately settled for something that cannot even begin to compare with mommy.
As I watched this scene unfold my first thought was we do that all the time with God. We are going to God the one who created us, sustains us, loves us, provides for us, and we get distracted along the way, and we settle for something that cannot even compare to the greatness of God. It would be good for all us to spend some time thinking about things that might be distracting us from God, and than begin taking action to remove those things. After all, how silly would it be if something as simple and pointless as a toy cell phone were keeping us from running into the arms of God!
