The Weekly Word: What we need, not necessarily what we want

I have to confess to you that becoming a parent has done more to help me understand God than getting a degree in theology. For example, when I held my first son in my arms in the delivery room 35 years ago, I began to understand how much God loves me.

God gave my wife, Dawn, and me a total of four sons, and as we raised those boys, some other “God lessons” began to come into focus. Like all parents, we tried to give our sons what they needed and not necessarily everything they wanted. In fact, there were times that we actually protected them from harm by not giving them what they wanted, only to be thanked by being told that we were being unfair. Sound familiar? But those times caused me to reflect on the times that I felt that God was being unfair when he failed to give me something I had asked him for. Let’s admit it — when things don’t go exactly our way we can get a little bit pouty with God can’t we?

Author Deborah Rau tells the following story: “As I pulled my brimming shopping cart to a stop at the checkout counter, a toy truck caught my son’s eye.

“‘Mommy — a truck. Can we buy it? Please?’ “With his fifth birthday only 11 days away, we had used our money to purchase his first bicycle, the one item he wanted more than anything else in the world. So I said no to the truck.