Life Lessons

At my age I am still amazed at how God works, how patient He is, how forgiving, how loving and how compassionate.

I still as a parent of four (15, 13, 11 and 2) am learning each day to be a better parent, a better husband, a better son, a better brother and a better friend.

My friend reminded me of a story I told him a while ago and it shows how much God wants to spend time with us.

While living in Tuscaloosa I had come home from a long day at work and was ready for some rest and relaxation. My son who was probably 9 or 10 had other ideas. He wanted to play catch in the front yard. As he went to get the gloves and a baseball to throw I kept hoping my wife would call us in to dinner soon. As we threw the ball my wife had come out and given us the "Five minutes till dinner" line.

As we continued to throw she soon came back out and said "Time for dinner". I then told my son "OK catch one more then we will go in". I threw him the ball and it was easy to catch. He caught it in his glove then dropped it. I threw it again and he did the same thing. Perfectly catching the ball the purposely dropping the ball each time I tossed it to him. It took time to register, but it finally hit me that all he wanted was TIME. He was going to do everything he could to stay out there and play catch with his dad. Even if that meant purposely dropping the ball.

Here is where the lesson comes in. That is what God wants from us. Our TIME and our ATTENTION. That is why sometimes the easy things in life do not go so well. The situations that come up, the opportunities we have to help that we don't take advantage of, the people we ignore. All those times when God is really there and he is calling out for our TIME and ATTENTION.

That evening tossing the ball with my son taught me a lot about how God longs for us and longs to have that deep relationship with Him, but we put it off because we feel our schedule is more important and our time and attention are given to something else.