When is the last time that you played a game with a toddler? (Or attempted such a feet.)
My daughter was given a pair of Christmas-themed Go Fish cards and I thought it would be such a great idea to take the opportunity to teach her the game. She loves counting, she loves finding matches, and she loves spending time together. Win, win, win.
I patiently went through every card to show her the number on each one and the coordinating picture they had given. I explained how we wanted two (a match!) of each card but sometimes we don’t have all of the cards in our hand so in this game we ask if the other person might have a matching card for us. And then I pretended to play a round with myself to show her how I ask and if the other person didn’t have the card then I got to say something really fun… “GO FISH!”
In my head this went over a lot more clearly than it obviously had as she excitedly yelled “Go Fish” while putting down 2 random cards together and then started making these mini piles of 2 all over our floor.
Not exactly how I saw it going, also not sure exactly how I saw it going. She’s three.
At the end of her piling all of the cards two-by-two, we then played 52 card pickup to try and start the game again.
This time she did so much better. She never even had to say Go Fish. Mainly because she would just take cards from my hand and put them back in the deck so she could choose the one she wanted from it.
She had a blast. I was left wondering when I learned to play Go Fish. And we put the cards away for another day.
I love games. Board games, card games, old school Ninentdo games, but they don’t work out that well unless everyone understands and plays by the rules. And it is only fun if the rules don’t make it feel utterly impossible to get a win (much like playing monopoly with my cousins growing up who would cheat their way into destroying my sister and I as they made up whatever they could convince us was a real rule while we played).
This week marked a turning point in one of the jobs that I have been working as we made great headway on a system that could work for a bogged-down task sheet. The real kicker was that with or without the system all of the items needed to get done, the new procedure just made it clear and efficient for it to happen, because at the end of the day - it was all my responsibility.
I could make the craziest new rules but the only one affected by them would be… me. I had to live by what I created. So I designed the whole process knowing that it had to be realistic and manageable.
This is actually where I find a lot of comfort in the person of Jesus.
When we are young, we find tension with our parents because they “make rules that they don’t have to live by.”
When we find new places of employment, we might even grow bitter that the “leadership is above the rules” or the “government is above the law”.
There is always this underlying friction that we see when someone can make a statement but never be responsible to live by it themselves. “If they only knew how hard it was to ___________, then they wouldn’t ask so much of us”.
Enter Jesus.
When God the Father created the world, Jesus was with Him. When the world needed a Savior, Jesus (God as Son) stepped down onto earth. And when the world grew disillusioned with God’s plans, Jesus showed them the Way by living it Himself.
God is not so far off that He doesn’t understand everything that He is asking of you. He understands.
Scripture says: “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin..” (Hebrews 4:14-15)
Friends, it would have been enough for Jesus to come down as a man to die on a cross for our sin - but He came as a baby to teach us and guide us and experience everything we will in this life so that He could empathize with our own suffering.
He was never above His own design.
He suffers. He is rejected. He is abandoned. He is hated. He is persecuted. He understands.
And just as He knows the trials and temptations because He Himself experienced them in the flesh, may we also remember the end of the same passage of scripture that continues in verse 16 to say: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)
We get to come close, following right behind Jesus Himself, into the throneroom of God for MERCY and HELP. Like a child storms into their parent’s bedroom at all hours of the night because they are thirsty, or cold, or scared. We have been thirsty. We have been cold. We have been scared. So, yes, come. We understand.