Yesterday after church we all gathered at my mother-in-law’s beautiful home to celebrate Easter with our family. It was a sweet time, similar to last year, with good food and an egg hunt for the girls. I took this picture during the egg hunt moments before Bethany, as she so often does, provided me with yet another allegorical insight into my relationship with God.
My mother-in-law had filled each plastic egg with some sort of tiny treasure. Some held stickers, others plastic rings or fuzzy toy chicks. Bethany and Harper wandered around the yard picking up eggs, opening each one and peering expectantly inside. Several eggs into it, Bethany had come upon a purple plastic necklace. “A necklace!” She declared with delight. She couldn’t put it on fast enough and she smiled as she gazed at it hanging around her neck. Soon after she found another egg containing another necklace, this time with blue plastic beads. With equal excitement she adorned herself with it and continued picking up eggs.
After a few more eggs, she opened one egg and stopped, staring inside. Without saying anything, she rose to her feet and slowly lifted its contents into the light. It was a “real” necklace, made with a metal chain and a glass heart pendant. She stared at it for a moment as it glittered in the sun. “I don’t like these necklaces anymore,” she stated matter-of-factly, and she yanked the two plastic necklaces from her neck. She tossed them on the ground behind her, all the while never taking her eyes off the shining new necklace. She ran over to Daddy for help putting it on, and from that point forward all other plastic necklaces she found were promptly relegated to Harper.
Thomas Chalmers preached a famous sermon titled “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection”. Yesterday I saw that expulsive power at work in my three-year-old. Chalmers’ premise is that it takes more to quell a love for worldly things then simply to say “Bad, bad worldly things!” It takes a new and greater affection to replace the lesser one. And of course, that one great affection that expels all else is Jesus Christ.
When I take the time to truly behold Jesus, I want to respond as my daughter did. I want to be so dazzled by His glory that I find myself tearing from my neck the plastic imitations and refusing all lesser treasures in order that I might have the One great thing, the “real” thing, and so to be ruined for this world.
Thank you Bethany, for one more beautiful reminder.
My mother-in-law had filled each plastic egg with some sort of tiny treasure. Some held stickers, others plastic rings or fuzzy toy chicks. Bethany and Harper wandered around the yard picking up eggs, opening each one and peering expectantly inside. Several eggs into it, Bethany had come upon a purple plastic necklace. “A necklace!” She declared with delight. She couldn’t put it on fast enough and she smiled as she gazed at it hanging around her neck. Soon after she found another egg containing another necklace, this time with blue plastic beads. With equal excitement she adorned herself with it and continued picking up eggs.
After a few more eggs, she opened one egg and stopped, staring inside. Without saying anything, she rose to her feet and slowly lifted its contents into the light. It was a “real” necklace, made with a metal chain and a glass heart pendant. She stared at it for a moment as it glittered in the sun. “I don’t like these necklaces anymore,” she stated matter-of-factly, and she yanked the two plastic necklaces from her neck. She tossed them on the ground behind her, all the while never taking her eyes off the shining new necklace. She ran over to Daddy for help putting it on, and from that point forward all other plastic necklaces she found were promptly relegated to Harper.
Thomas Chalmers preached a famous sermon titled “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection”. Yesterday I saw that expulsive power at work in my three-year-old. Chalmers’ premise is that it takes more to quell a love for worldly things then simply to say “Bad, bad worldly things!” It takes a new and greater affection to replace the lesser one. And of course, that one great affection that expels all else is Jesus Christ.
When I take the time to truly behold Jesus, I want to respond as my daughter did. I want to be so dazzled by His glory that I find myself tearing from my neck the plastic imitations and refusing all lesser treasures in order that I might have the One great thing, the “real” thing, and so to be ruined for this world.
Thank you Bethany, for one more beautiful reminder.
