I didn't have a lot of toys growing up. I didn't need a lot. My imagination was my best toy. It helped me make the best of the few other toys I did have. There weren't near as many toys available in those days. Nor do I remember parents being as generous in the number of toys they gave their children. Many of them grew up during the Great Depression, and the only toys they had were handmade, so the idea of buying lots of store toys for one child seemed extravagant and unnecessary to them.
Today there are so many toys available that it is mind boggling. Electronic toys. Learning toys. Dolls of every size and color. Cars and trucks and machines in miniature that are hard to discern from the real ones in a photo. The media has overtaken the toy industry. Want to know what will be popular this Christmas? Just look at the movies, cartoons, and computer games circulating.
Cooper (4), our only boy grandson, has hundreds of little matchbox style renditions of cool rides at home. He is a very fortunate young man. Lately, he has reminded me of some important life lessons by his joyful play and interplay with his toys. Even with all the choices he has at home he loves to come to our house and longingly gaze into our curio cabinet that contains the automotive collectibles that I have accumulated over the years. I still have a couple of the the promotional models that Ford would send to people in the 60's when they purchased one of their cars. The cars have the feature highlights of the cars stamped into their undercarriage. Someday they may be worth a lot of money. Cooper sees them as something to play with, and because he is a careful player, I have let him play with them. I have other replicas that are far more delicate and only for show, and though Cooper does not fully understand why, they are off limits to even careful play.
What Copper reminded me of most recently is that even when we have hundreds of choices of things we can have, we still tend to focus on and want the one thing that we don't or can't have. That is not a slam on Cooper's character. He is a delightful child. But his childish actions are reflective of all of us in our most exposed state. Childhood is the time when we are all supposed to learn the valuable interactive lessons of having, sharing, giving and leaving alone.
Some learn those lessons as children, those who do not, do not grow up very well. For instance, if you do not grow up knowing how to devote your imagination and loyalty to a monogamous marital relationship, you will find yourself longing for other people's toys. In fact, people themselves can become nothing more than toys for you to manipulate and use for your own play. This is the essence of the sin nature. What drove Eve and Adam to desire the only fruit from the only tree that was forbidden in a garden brimming with legitimate choices? It was not passing the curio of the forbidden that got them. It started when they stopped to gaze into the possibilities of possessing the forbidden. Sin's rotten fruition was taking the forbidden. First in the imagination, then in hand. Jesus reminded us that sin starts in the heart. To lust is sin. It is adultery in the heart. That qualifies us all for the hell heap. The self righteous forget that. We all need grace at the point of the thought. God forbid that we destroy others lives by actually reaching into the curio of the forbidden...when we already have the greatest treasure... and find ourselves willing to sacrifice it for just one more toy.
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