Take my Legos, take my toys

It was a moment that parents love to stumble upon, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.

When our boys were young, their job every Saturday morning was to clean their room upstairs.  It didn’t matter to us how long it took them, 10 minutes or 7 hours, they were free to do other things in the rest of the house once the room was cleaned.  But they were definitely not quick about getting it done.  I can’t recall a time when the job took them less than an hour.  They would clean, get distracted, play with their toys…and we didn’t mind, really.  The longer they took, the more peaceful our Saturday mornings downstairs tended to be.

They had a small CD player, and they loved having music going while they “cleaned” their room.  At this point in time, they were all into a Jeremy Camp album, called “Stay” – and they especially loved a song called “Take my life”.  It had a rock anthem beat and guitar riffs on the last word of each line – right up a little boy’s alley.  Here’s the chorus:

Take my life (riff)
take my mind (riff)
take my soul (riff)
take my will (riff)
As I am yours and I give it all to You!

They played this song all the time and always sang it at the top of their lungs.  On this particular Saturday, my parental timing was perfect.  I passed by the bottom of the stairs at just the right moment to hear our oldest son call out to his younger brother:

Hey, hey, wait…check this out:
Take my Legos,
take my toys,
mumble,
mumble,
As I am yours and I give it all to You!

You could hear the pride in his voice as he was coming up with his own lyrics to match the beat of the song they loved so much.  Taking all this in, I stifled a surprised chuckle – not wanting to ruin the adorableness of the moment – and quietly walked away before they realized I had overheard them.

Jeremy Camp’s song was based on Jesus’ answer to the question: Which command from the law did God consider to be the most important?  Here is what He replied:

Mark 12:30
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Jesus was pointing His audience back to one of the nation of Israel’s primary lessons about God. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means that you love Him with all your best, all of who you are.  Jesus’ Jewish audience would have picked up on the importance of the connection Jesus was making.  While I’m certain Jesus didn’t add any guitar riffs to the end of each line, the addition of them by Jeremy Camp certainly got the attention of my boys. 

Changing the lyrics to “Take my Legos, take my toys”, demonstrated that our oldest son got the point – that we offer our best, our all to God – and his favorite thing in the world at that point in his life was Legos.  He loved to spend hours creating, playing, and dreaming with his Lego builds.  For him to offer his Legos to God was a pretty real sacrifice, at his young age.

Do we pray similar prayers?  When was the last time you offered your house, your car, your career, or your favorite hobby/toy to God?  We can’t leave them off the list if we’re going to love the Lord your God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.  

Keep Pressing,
Ken

He who dies with the most toys

When I was a kid, a popular bumper sticker read, “He who dies with the most toys wins”.  The thought process behind it was the natural result of the massive corporate growth of the 80’s and the “greed-is-good” mentality many fell into.  After you make all this money, what should you do with it?  Well, a lot of folks started buying “toys”.  Bigger and bigger toys.  Sports cars, trucks, 4-wheelers, boats, jewelry, vacation homes, bigger TVs, the latest electronics…anything that was for their own enjoyment and would also broadcast that they had the wealth to pull it off.  We even had a TV show about the ultra-rich called “Lifestyles of the rich and famous”.

Now, when “He who dies with the most toys” actually dies…his stuff is still here.  And something needs to be done with it.  I’ve never dealt with inheritance situations, but I know several people who have.  Many of them describe the process as rather touchy – there are all the emotions that come with a loss, but there’s also a tension between family members about how to handle the stuff left behind.

This is not a new tension.  In fact, in the middle of a teaching session with His disciples in front of a large crowd, someone interrupted Jesus, asking Him to help sort out a family inheritance issue:

Luke 12:13
Someone from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

This person wanted Jesus to play the part of the community magistrate and mandate a solution with his brother.  Jesus is a popular teacher and this is in a public forum, so I can understand the reason why he would have asked.  However, Jesus was not interested in stepping into this family dispute:

Luke 12:14-15
“Friend,” He said to him, “who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you?”  He then told them, “Watch out and be on guard against all greed, because one’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions.

That’s a great lesson the crowd received.  Family drama and individual attitudes can be hard to deal with, but dividing up a parent’s possessions after their death is incredibly stressful.  In their hurt and pain, people often get greedy with their potential ownership of property, and it can show up in a variety of different ways – looking for revenge, controlling another person or situation, or by finding validation through how much stuff they own.  Notice Jesus’ warning was to be on guard against *all* greed.

Since He answered the person’s question, Jesus could have left it there and got back to teaching what He had planned to talk about.  Instead, Jesus continued with a parable story to help them understand just how dangerous greed can be:

Luke 12:16-20
Then He told them a parable:

A rich man’s land was very productive.
He thought to
himself, “What should
I do, since
I don’t have anywhere to store
my crops?

I will do this,”
he said.
“I’ll tear down
my barns and build bigger ones and store all
my grain and
my goods there.  Then
I’ll say to
myself,
‘You have many goods stored up for many years.
Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy
yourself.’”

“But God said to him, ‘You fool!  This very night your life is demanded of you.  And the things you have prepared – whose will they be?’

Twelve times, this rich man referred to himself as he thought through what to do with his abundance.  Zero thoughts about other people and any needs he could meet.  Zero thoughts about God and how He expected him to manage the things he possessed.

Then Jesus closes out his teaching on greed with this statement:

Luke 12:21
“That’s how it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Although a person’s greed can be expressed in a variety of ways, all greed comes down to a heart-level problem – selfishness.  Jesus did not say it was wrong for the man to be rich.  Jesus didn’t say that it was wrong for him to make plans on how to handle his abundance.  Where the rich man went wrong was that he saw his abundance as treasure to be stored up for himself.  He wanted that life of ease.  His end game was a life where he could take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy himself.  But Jesus said the rich man’s plan was severely flawed.

That can sting a little, can’t it?  We make plans for retirement – but what, exactly, are we planning on retiring to?  Some people want to golf all day, every day.  Some want to travel.  Most of us just envision life being easier without having to do this pesky “work thing” each week.  All those thoughts are focused on one person – ourselves.

Since retirement is a ways off for most of us, perhaps we should consider a closer example: We daydream all week about our weekend plans, which almost always revolve around us or, at most, our immediate family.  When was the last time we planned some of “our” weekend time to intentionally help others?  Do we make plans for how to spend “our” money with thoughts of how God would desire us to?

Within a few years of seeing the “He who dies with the most toys wins” bumper sticker, I saw another  bumper sticker in response.  Not to be outdone, many Christians put this on their cars: “He who dies with the most toys still dies”.  The rich man in Jesus’ parable story was not able to fully experience the richness of his abundance…because he was focused on himself.  The point from the story is that we are rich toward God when we are rich toward others.  We don’t know when our time on earth is done, so let’s make sure we’re using our abundance the way God would want us to…and not giving in to all forms of greed as we squabble with our brothers and sisters.  Because one’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions.

Keep Pressing,
Ken