It had been a long day of work Saturday. I was able to help a work crew assist my friend Duane plant a billion trees (give or take) on his family's property. I then came home to work with my daughter on cleaning pine needles from a portion of our property. This area is below our house on a canyon slope. It's a beautiful area, very picturesque. Unfortunately it also accumulates trillions (I am not exaggerating...sort of) of pine needles and leaves. After three hours and 10 completely filled 55 gallon trash bags, our work was complete. As I let Emily go and play in the front yard with her brother, I proceeded to shower up from a day of grime.
About ten minutes later my wife knocked on the bathroom door to report on the events going on in the front yard.
"Your daughter", she began.
Now, you know that things are not looking good when the children are suddenly "yours".
"Your daughter managed to tie 'your son' (
there it is again) around the rib cage underneath his arms" while he was in the cherry tree."
"Then", she continued, "Ryan jumped out of the tree to see if he
could fly!"
It was then that I was sincerely wondering whether or not the children were actually mine. Perhaps there was some sort of mix-up at the hospital. But, given that the boy draws a striking resemblance to myself, I owned up to the fact that my children were capable of unspeakable ignorance.
Culprit #2
Culprit #1Upon dressing and contemplating how to address the situation, my question to my children was simply "what were you thinking?" Emily (who is seven) proceeded to give several different accounts of the event while trying to pin most of the blame on Ryan (who is three). Ryan, who had only suffered minor rope burn around his armpits, had pretty much mentally moved passed the event. So I wasn't getting much from him.
After a few minutes of lecture about the dangers of such activity and instruction about never doing such a stunt again, my wife banned on all things rope or rope like for an undetermined amount of time. The children have moved on from the event and have not said anything about it again. The parents, however, are left to ponder what could have been a disastrous scenario.
"What were you thinking?" It's an easy question to ask a seven and three year old when we observe foolish behavior that could have resulted in tragic consequences. But, how many times during our lifetimes does the same question cross our God's mind? We engage in what would seem to be harmless activity that leads to disastrous results that is so obvious to our Heavenly Father. And we do it over, and over, and over again.
I am so thankful that we have a loving Heavenly Father who has given His Son to us so that He is able to pick us up during and after our "what were you thinking?" episodes.
...but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
