Vroom, Vroom

David looks up at me with his head cocked back, hair matted under his biking helmet (he's always sweating btw) and a smile spreading across his dirty face that could make mothers cry for joy the world over.  I'm a father of course so I simply note it with "Cool."

I took my 3 year old - getting close to 4 now - to the skate/bike park on one of my early morning bike rides, and to say he was beside himself with joy may be to understate his emotions.  I'm not exactly sure what kinds of thoughts and feelings run through my 3-year-old's brain but my guess is when he's scooting around a bike-park and going over "jumps", he's thinking something like "Vroom, vroom, vroom, fast, fast, fast, cool, cool, cool."  I hope his thoughts are relatively uncomplicated and he's free to just revel in the joy of what he's doing.

I was sharing this with a friend of mine and he was sharing with me how it kills him when his son's hopes get so up about a new hobby, only to be crushed by it's lack of fulfillment.  But David doesn't seem to be there yet, maybe because he has such a plethora of hobbies to choose from.  Last night we played soccer, baseball and dodge-ball and by the end of it he was begging to wrestle.  The kid's inexhaustible.

As his father/caretaker/egg-him-on-to-try-everything-guy, I just get beside myself by how much David relishes life.  I know life is going to let the little guy down.  But he's showing me something profound about how God must look on us.  And I have to admit that I'm not exactly sure what it is.

But here's what I think it might be:  God must just love it when we're having fun.  He must love it when we get so consumed in what we're doing that we can't think any thoughts but "Vroom, vroom" ones.  He must love the artist/creator in each one of us.  And I know for a fact that for him, this has got to be his heaven.

While seemingly we're really not that important in the grand scheme of things, it's an amazing that God allows his world to revolve around us in such a personal way.  And we bring him glory when we really enjoy this world he's given, when we trust in the boundaries he's set and perhaps most deeply when we take our blood, bruises and disappointments from life's fall to him.

Recently I've been struck by the over-emphasis on personal religion in western Christianity.  I believe God saves us in community and into community.  But God is concerned with the individual as well, and David's showing me this better than anyone could.  And don't even get me started on Teya.  She's a world unto herself!