Theology in a Toy Store

A parent often suffers heartbreak in a toy store. Most especially when you see your child with rounded-eyes, caught up in excitement, asks you, “Can I have this dad?”

Every parent wants to own the toy store, when your kid is in it.  I wish I could say, “Grab all the things you want, to your heart’s content.” Toys! They bring so much joys to children. And toy stores abound not really because of kids, but because parents pay the price of their existence.

 

But then, you go to calculate, perhaps with your limitations, you can’t afford to have all the toys you’d ever want your kids to have. First, you’d have to contend how much they would modify your budget, second the space they would deduct from your house. And then, when you think about it too, toys are a just passing fancy. One minute, your kid keeps quiet and behaved when you buy them, and then just a few hours or days, the kid has another hunger for another toy.

But still, on a toy store just recently, my eyes were almost wet and there was a lump on my throat. Seeing my kid wanting so much toys, I wanted to buy her all till she’s satisfied. But then I can’t. It’s all too much for the current budget. I’m sure every common parent must have had that dilemma.

And then I remembered, Jesus the Lord,

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Mat 7:11 ESV)”

As far as I can, I want to be a good father to my kids. But the deeper parts of me, I know I lack many things, sinner that I am.  But as I was gazing my child in a toy store, wanting to bring so much for her because I know that those things would make her happy, I was transfixed with the thought of how God the Father would bring so much joy to us, when He gives us all things, when even ultimately He would give us all of Him, yes Himself, because of Christ’s work.

As Science channels tells us how infinite the universe is, can you imagine How much more infinite the Maker of it is?  In fact, the word infinite is an understatement. He would bring us so much joy, much more than the universe can ever contain.  And that is so much true, even as much as a universe truer than as much as I want to buy all the things my kid wants in a toy store.

In the meantime, there is so much suffering in this life, I know.  And so as when it was in the time of the Apostle Paul.  But I always tell myself this is oh so true because I can feel its truth, standing as a father to my kid in a toy store.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Rom 8:32 ESV)

In the meantime, we wait as kids. And tell you what: one afternoon, 2000 years ago, thru someone’s bloody hands, our Father has already paid the cost of everything.