Forget The Lines!
Everyone has a favourite television show. Your may be a detective show, medical shows, game shows, soaps, reality tv or decorating shows. I’ve always wondered why they call them soap operas. Maybe it’s all the dirt in them???
One of my favourites is "Ask This Old House." Part of each episode is a segment called, "What is It?". Now I thought I was quite good at this. A lot of interesting tools have come and gone but my average is not doing well anymore. I don’t want to admit it but I have been batting 1000 this last year or so. That is 1000 to the negative. I just can’t figure any of these new gadgets out. Expectantly I wait for them to show me the tool and then I have this blank burned out light bulb stare. I have absolutely no idea.
If I was a child and looking at something I would have a totally different stare. They look at new things as adventures. We look at new things as if we were looking at something we saw before and just can’t make it out. After all, we don’t want to look totally stupid. Maybe we need to become childlike again where we look at things as adventures or a time of discovery.
When my brother and I were much younger we used to do all kinds of strange things. I remember one time, we found an old piece of plywood and a couple of 2X4's down the alley. No one was home at the time and our imaginations went wild! Before you could count to 27, we stormed into the garage and grabbing two shovels. We dug a hole in the middle of the backyard for what seemed to be hours. It was probably less then one. Laying the 2X4's over the hole and then placing the plywood down we made a roof for the hole. After shoveling the dirt back over the whole thing, we had a room underground, where we could get away from everyone and no one would be able to find us. Well, so we thought. The large bump in the middle of the yard seemed to be a give away of what was up, no pun intended.
And what a surprise for our parents when they arrived home! Mom was not impressed but only asked, "Why." And Dad, he thought it was okay, he now had less grass to cut for a while. You see, back then our parents were not gardeners. We only had grass and a push lawnmower.
When children are young and impressionable, it doesn’t take them long to learn what a crayon can do. You put it in their hand and move it across the page. Before too many minutes goes by they are doing it themselves or trying to eat it. Then we do a most horrible thing to our children. We encourage them to colour inside the lines. Children run and skip and can have great fun for the first few year of their lives, until we introduce them to television as a babysitter. This is the beginning of the end of our imaginations. And we really end it when we take them to school and make them sit still and listen. I wonder if the people who invent these tools I can never guess, sit in front of tv’s or computer screens playing mindless games?
Children sitting in class is sort of like adults in church. We ask you to come to church and sit and listen to someone doing it all for you. You even stand and sit when told. We have taught ourselves to let the leaders do it for us. You don’t need an imagination. You don’t even have to read your bibles. We can do that for you. And even if you did read your bible on your own you would be like me with, "What is It?".
Jesus said, "I have something I want to show you." We need to take the gospel and examine it, get into it and find out for ourselves what it means to us. A little encouragement is good from others but for it to be ours, we have to know Jesus on our own. Take time this week to colour outside the lines and get to know the best teacher of all. Then we can all sing together, "What a friend we have in Jesus."
Something I thought about. Rob
One of my favourites is "Ask This Old House." Part of each episode is a segment called, "What is It?". Now I thought I was quite good at this. A lot of interesting tools have come and gone but my average is not doing well anymore. I don’t want to admit it but I have been batting 1000 this last year or so. That is 1000 to the negative. I just can’t figure any of these new gadgets out. Expectantly I wait for them to show me the tool and then I have this blank burned out light bulb stare. I have absolutely no idea.
If I was a child and looking at something I would have a totally different stare. They look at new things as adventures. We look at new things as if we were looking at something we saw before and just can’t make it out. After all, we don’t want to look totally stupid. Maybe we need to become childlike again where we look at things as adventures or a time of discovery.
When my brother and I were much younger we used to do all kinds of strange things. I remember one time, we found an old piece of plywood and a couple of 2X4's down the alley. No one was home at the time and our imaginations went wild! Before you could count to 27, we stormed into the garage and grabbing two shovels. We dug a hole in the middle of the backyard for what seemed to be hours. It was probably less then one. Laying the 2X4's over the hole and then placing the plywood down we made a roof for the hole. After shoveling the dirt back over the whole thing, we had a room underground, where we could get away from everyone and no one would be able to find us. Well, so we thought. The large bump in the middle of the yard seemed to be a give away of what was up, no pun intended.
And what a surprise for our parents when they arrived home! Mom was not impressed but only asked, "Why." And Dad, he thought it was okay, he now had less grass to cut for a while. You see, back then our parents were not gardeners. We only had grass and a push lawnmower.
When children are young and impressionable, it doesn’t take them long to learn what a crayon can do. You put it in their hand and move it across the page. Before too many minutes goes by they are doing it themselves or trying to eat it. Then we do a most horrible thing to our children. We encourage them to colour inside the lines. Children run and skip and can have great fun for the first few year of their lives, until we introduce them to television as a babysitter. This is the beginning of the end of our imaginations. And we really end it when we take them to school and make them sit still and listen. I wonder if the people who invent these tools I can never guess, sit in front of tv’s or computer screens playing mindless games?
Children sitting in class is sort of like adults in church. We ask you to come to church and sit and listen to someone doing it all for you. You even stand and sit when told. We have taught ourselves to let the leaders do it for us. You don’t need an imagination. You don’t even have to read your bibles. We can do that for you. And even if you did read your bible on your own you would be like me with, "What is It?".
Jesus said, "I have something I want to show you." We need to take the gospel and examine it, get into it and find out for ourselves what it means to us. A little encouragement is good from others but for it to be ours, we have to know Jesus on our own. Take time this week to colour outside the lines and get to know the best teacher of all. Then we can all sing together, "What a friend we have in Jesus."
Something I thought about. Rob
posted by Robin @ 7:34 am
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