“I’ve been carrying you on my back from the day you were born, and I’ll keep on carrying you when you’re old. I’ll be there, bearing you when you’re old and gray. I’ve done it and will keep on doing it, carrying you on my back, saving you… Can you picture me without reducing me?… You’re a hardheaded bunch and hard to help. I’m ready to help you right now. Deliverance is not a long-range plan. Salvation isn’t on hold…” -Isaiah 46
Once upon a time a child was created; a child filled with wonder. A wonder-full child named Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea was most happy out of doors where the world was big and there was plenty of space and light. While Sweet Pea was small in stature, there was absolutely nothing small about Sweet Pea’s thoughts; they were expansive, limitless, alive. Sweet Pea was content. Content to be loved by The Creator. Content to help when needed. Content to adventure. Content to learn. Then one day, it happened. Sweet Pea was asked, “Don’t you want more?” Of course Sweet Pea wanted more - More Love! More adventure! More helping! More learning and growing!
No. No. No. This isn’t what ‘they’ meant. They asked Sweet Pea, “Don’t you want to be more?”
This confused Sweet Pea immensely. “How can I be more?” Sweet Pea thought… and thought and thought. Be more. What does that even mean? Sweet Pea had never really considered self before. This was a new experience. Day after day Sweet Pea considered what it might mean to be more, and day after day Sweet Pea’s thoughts grew smaller and smaller, closing in around self. No more thoughts alive and expansive and full of wonder. Instead of learning and growing and working and adventuring for the joy of any of those things, Sweet Pea focused on being more. Keeping track of everything, always trying to be more. While the outside of Sweet Pea’s life could look like more to some, accumulating an impressive list of accomplishments and accolades and becoming fashionable and relevant, the inside shriveled. To be more on the outside seemed to contradict fullness on the inside. “How is this better? How is this more?” Sweet Pea pondered, tired.
A morning did come though; Sweet Pea awoke early. A quietness permeated the dawn. The quiet was like throwing open a window after a long winter, and Sweet Pea revived from listlessness. In the quiet, Sweet Pea noticed the color of the horizon, and the color of the horizon sparked an ember within Sweet Pea that had grown dormant years prior… prior to trying to be more. Sweet Pea smiled. Sweet Pea wondered. Sweet Pea remembered The Creator. Sweet Pea forgot about self for a moment and breathed. No calculating worth or status or relevance. It was a moment to remember. Sweet Pea awoke and returned to The More once again.
“You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.”-Ephesians 2:1-2
“Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” -Mark 10:15
“In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal… Walk by the light you have so darkness doesn’t destroy you. If you walk in darkness, you don’t know where you’re going. As you have the light, believe in the light. Then the light will be within you, and shining through your lives. You’ll be children of the light.” -John 12:25, 35-36