Lessons from a Toddler

How delightfully simplistic is the life of a child. Their world is so small and their crises so insignificant compared with those of the real world. The other day, after church, Daddy and Mommy drove out to look at a potential house in Battle Ground. When Mommy came back she said that Ania was watching the other cars on the road and thought that everyone going in the opposite direction was going to church (where we had just come from) and everyone going in the same direction as our van was going to look at the house.

Thinking back to the real world (the world of the grown-ups), we could maybe learn something from the world of a toddler. Perhaps we should develop a more single minded view as we look at the world around us. Everyone on earth is going one of two ways: to heaven or to hell. The world is full of problems and I am not minimizing the day to day struggles and decisions that come up, but we would do well to occasionally pull back and take a look at the larger picture. The ultimate question is where we will all spend eternity and the day in and day out situations of life, however important at the moment, cannot compare with our eternal destiny.

If we began to look at the people with whom we interact day to day as bound for eternity, granted only a short space of time on this earth, would it change the nature of our interaction with them?