My Kids Don't Deserve . . .

I've been trying to post this since Friday, but have been having trouble posting by email.

We just left a game park in Burkina Faso that was originally set up as an elephant sanctuary. Burkina Faso now has West Africa’s elephant population, and we were thrilled to see many of them as we drove through the rugged terrain Friday morning. In preparation for this and similar trips, my wife had picked up some binoculars for our sons – a pair for each – when we were in the States last year. They were kids’ binoculars, but they did have some functionality. We got them each a pair to avoid the constant competition between them the last time we went to a game park.

I think our three year old’s binoculars were rendered useless within a few minutes of coming out of the box. We still had one pretty good pair. After we had been out looking at the elephants, we returned to our cabin to pack up. In the course of the packing, I found our older sons’ binoculars lying on the dusty ground. He was off playing chase. My immediate thought was, “My kids don’t deserve these gifts.”

I was immediately convicted almost as soon as the thought entered my mind. How often must my God, my Father, think the same thing about me. How often am I ungrateful or fail to properly use the gifts that he has given me. God has a purpose for every gift, yet how often do I allow my gifts to lie in the dust, while I play chase – chasing pleasure or distraction or anything other that what God intends for me.

Over twenty years ago I heard Joe Beam define grace as, “When God gives us what we need, not what we deserve.” I certainly need a lot of it.