I was just thinking about ...
A friend recently was writing about his childhood memories regarding the
flying of kites. He talked about that the trials and frustrations of his
experiences and then moved on to lament how today’s kites are almost
indestructible and tend to fly themselves. Why lament, if you remember these
kites as I do, you also remember the frustrations that went with them. And a
kite that doesn’t tear or crash, wow, that would be great, right? Not
necessarily; listen and learn, grasshopper. (Another unimportant trip down
memory lane, forget about it.)
How will children learn the lessons these kites offered so inexpensively? I remember these kites. The kites we grew up with were made of balsa wood sticks and paper. They tore easily while being assembled in the clumsy hands of a child. And the slightest tear would prove disastrous in the air. The strong winds of Spring would destroy it quickly. They taught lessons about care and quality in the work one is doing. To get the tail right, one would have to experiment with different sizes. This taught the necessity of trying new things, of trial and error. And even it you got the kite just right, there was always an errant swirling wind and a tree working in tandem to eat your kite, as Charlie Brown would have put it. This teaches us that even when we do things right, disaster can still strike. It teaches perseverance, the willingness to fall and try again after having your best efforts defeated. All for the cost of a dime or so, and a half an hour of building time.
Where can children learn these lessons so
cheaply anymore? The world wants to raise the stakes and make lessons more
expensive. There’s more profit in that. And why do we adults buy into that?
Maybe it’s because we remember the pain of failure, but not the lessons of
success that it teaches. And we just can’t tolerate failures, can we? Our
world doesn’t want them, can’t stand them and won’t hear about them. We
can’t stand to have our children be a failure at anything, can we? Yet failure
is an integral part of success. Life is hard and painful and full of failures.
And yet we won’t allow our children to experience the pain of failure, any
failure. We say it will stunt their self-esteem. Hogwash! Let them learn their
lessons while they are cheap, for the lessons that come later in life are very
expensive.
In scripture, one of Jesus’ parables speaks of a wealthy man who invests money in
his assistants. One is given a huge sum of money; another is given half that
amount, and a third, a much smaller amount. The first two invest the money
wisely and double their return. The third buries his to give back the original
amount to the Master. The master, a businessman, is no fool and understands the
nature of investments. He had to trust the third servant some just to entrust
any money with him. Had he had lost the talent in a bad investment, I’m
willing to bet he would have said, “You won’t be trying that again, will
you? Try it again, more wisely this time.” But no, the servant wasn’t even
willing to try it in the first place. He rejected the trust the master put in
him as he rejected the chance to take a risk. God has given you life on this
earth to enjoy. In doing so, God is showing some trust in you. Yes, there are
risks in life and a certain amount of caution must be exercised. But to live in
constant fear of risk, is no life at all. And it is the same as burying what God
has entrusted to you in the ground. And remember, all lessons here really are
cheap, When Christ died for you, he made this life into a cheap kite, relatively
speaking. It can be repaired and remade and retried over and over. So go have
some fun, go fly a kite.
Come
around anytime, I’ll be here and so will God.
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