The message gives me new insight into the behaviors of children I have been working with at the Hands and Feet Project for the past 3 weeks now. Yesterday I spent a good part of the morning organizing the playroom in the Toddler House: switching out toys, pulling old or broken ones and putting new/different ones on the shelf. I had 2 piles of toys: one pile that was salvageable with minor repair or new batteries, and one pile that was destined for the trash. Later in the afternoon, I saw one of the preschool boys playing with a broken See 'N Say, one of the toys I had put in the trash can in front of our house. I took it back, telling him it was broken and didn't work, and returned it to where it belonged...in the trash. He got mad and stomped off to sulk, thinking I was so mean to have taken away his toy... What he doesn't know is that in our depot, the entire back wall is filled with toys, some still in the original packaging, waiting for the opportunity to be used.
We are all like that sometimes. We hold on to things that might look nice, but they don't work or do us any good: unhealthy relationships, miserable job situations, and wrong mindsets because we think we're better off having something broken than not having anything at all. What we don't realize is that if we would just let go of our tight grip on it (whatever it is) and allow God to "fix it or toss it", we would receive something so much greater in return. We forget that our loving heavenly Father has a "depot", a heavenly storehouse filled with every good and perfect gift that is our inheritance. It is His good pleasure to give us the kingdom... (Luke 12:32)
