This morning in my closet, Mari spotted some brand new play dough up on the top shelf. "Pay-do! Pay-do!" She looked at me as if we had just stumbled into riches. When I did not share her delighted surprise, she squinted up at me with disapproval - as though my secret "birthday shelf" was an offensive betrayal. After a moment of non-verbal reprimand, she returned to the issue at hand. "Pay-DO!!"
She immediately toddled through the house to find a ladder. She returned with the chunky pink chair that coordinates with her sister's make-up table. "Huh-vee!" she grunted as she lumbered back into my closet to install her makeshift scaffolding. She triumphantly climbed up onto the seat and reached her arms high into the air, but STILL could not reach the play dough. She had elevated herself by roughly nine or ten inches - believing she would be able to easily grasp the play dough that was inexplicably withheld from her.
She looked at me. I smiled at her, "We'll get it down another time."
Her toddler attention span had been stretched to the limit. She looked at me just a while longer, then slid down and scampered off to her next adventure. No hard feelings. But now she knows there are "treasures" at the top of my closet. How often will she ask me about it?
To God, I must seem, at times, like Mari -wanting to grasp the treasures and blessings of the Kingdom in my own strength. I get a plan and I brave the "heights", to stand surely within reach. He patiently grins because from His perspective, I've only changed my position by inches -even on my tip-toes. He knows without His help, I'll never make it. He knows there is a perfect time to reveal these things to me. It won't be until I humble myself in His sight and allow Him to lift me up.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." [declares the Lord God Almighty] Isaiah 55:9
