Little Late

No Chemo!!  Dad goes back the end of June.  No Whammys, we leave for vacation just a few days after that!!

Blocks and Legos

These are staples in my house and of my almost 4 year-old.  Today's Lego/block adventure was a bird feeder.  Why a bird feeder,um, I don't really know.  Every time he built it the way he wanted it and it stayed up, he was ecstatic.  Excitedly running around the living room and begging me to look at it.  When it fell, he was crushed.  He would get mad and want to know why the blocks didn't stay up.  Each time I would talk to him about the design and what he could do differently and most importantly, that blocks will fall no matter what.  He would build it and it would stay then shortly after it would fall.  This pattern was repeated several times throughout the morning.  Each time the bird feeder fell, I would remind him blocks fall and to look at his design.  He finally figured out the problem was with a type of block he used on the bottom and it was too thin to hold the structure.

Fast forward to noon when we went to the Stations of the Cross.  Jesus falls not once, not twice, but three times on his way to Calvary.  Does he give up and quit?  Does he get mad and upset?  He carried a wooden cross that weighed between 75 and 125 lbs., to his death just so we would not have the same fate.  He fell so we could walk tall.  Unfortunately, like Alex's blocks, we all fall.  How many times have we walked away from a job, sport, or friendship because it was challenging or, "hard".  We all fall many times during our day.  Not all falls are as spectacular as Jesus' or the blocks, but they are falls none the less.  Failing to hold open a door for someone carrying too many things, replacing the toner cartridge in the printer, swearing in traffic(guilty!!), these are just a minuscule representation of the many ways we fall each and every day.  The beauty of God, much like the blocks, is that we can be rebuilt in His image. 

Jesus rose on the third day, after defeating death, and we too are given the opportunity to, "rise," to the occasion.  For most of us it will take many tries and we will continue to fall, even after being built up again.  We need to look at our own design flaws and see how we can fix them and make our own structure stand taller.  Jesus tells us to forgive our neighbor 70x7 times(Matthew 18:22).  He forgives us infinitely more then that, and yet we still fall and tumble like blocks.  My son got the hang of his block design after several tries, will I ever get the hang of it and stop falling?  I guess I need to stock up on band aides.