A Relationship With God, Part 2

God wants to have a relationship with us. A full relationship. A relationship like we have with the people around us. He wants to surprise us and to have fun with us. He doesn’t want to just sit there and have to respond to our prayer lists of needs.

Because we didn’t have a lot of money when I was a child, there were certain toys that just didn’t make sense for mom and dad to buy for us. I remember there were several years that I desperately wanted an Easy Bake Oven. My friends all had one and I wanted to be able to make hideous brownies under a 60 watt light bulb. I didn’t get one. Then, I wanted the Operation Game. My friends all had one and I wanted to jump every time I hit the side with the tweezers, too! Then, I wanted Light Brite. I wanted to make cool pre-punched pictures with lights. I got none of those gifts because of the expense and my parent’s sense that I would simply play with them for a short time and they would become trash.

My parents made beautiful gifts for us. One year Dad completely built a wooden kitchen set for us to play with in the basement. It was awesome! He painted the stovetop and put hinges on a door for us to open the oven. There was a small refrigerator that of course didn’t work, but we played for years with these things that never fell apart. Mom would sew beautiful stuffed animals for us and make wonderful clothes and would cut out gorgeous paper dolls for us and then taught us how to make clothes for those dolls with paper and crayons. We got lifetime gifts from our parents.

But the surprise? Well, that was saved for 30 years later when my husband came to Christmas one year with a big box. Inside that box was an “Easy Bake Oven”. I couldn’t believe it. He LOVED being able to surprise me with that gift. The next year for Christmas, I got a Light Brite from him and the year following that I got an Operation Game.

Do you think that God enjoyed watching me love my husband because I was able to be surprised at his gifts to me. Things that I thought I wanted and needed all of those years ago, but I really didn’t. Now I appreciated how much the gift-giver loved me. I turned around and gave away the Easy Bake oven to a child who really loved it – a 60 watt light bulb wasn’t going to do much at my age, but I have kept the Light Brite – I should pull it back out of the closet – it’s so much fun and the Operation Game still makes me into a failure. I guess I’d be a lousy surgeon.