His son was five and mine, six. Both boys had watched their dads play this game with their older siblings and both had learned the moves and names of the pieces. They decided to play each other, and we two dads interestingly, watched...
For about two hours we watched as they both left the queens exposed and kings unprotected, with equally absent strategy...
We dads looked on, wincing and fidgeting with each senseless move...
Neither of us interfered. The feelings we shared were those of great pride in our children attempting a game that they had absolutely no real concept of and the intense agony of seeing both of our sons miss incredibly simple moves that eluded them and committing defensive suicides, turn after turn after turn...
I looked across, somewhere in this little eternity and asked him simply " Do you think this is how God feels, watching us"?
We both laughed long and hard , and for one tiny moment, felt a different kind of kinship with our Creator...
How many days in this short little lifetime, have been filled by me, with the same well intentioned attempts and futile, child like incompetences?
Most of them...
Strangely, I doubt I'm alone in this...
Life is just too big to get nearly right. For every move well played, in a sportsmanlike fashion, I find ten others where I dropped a ball I had no clue I was even carrying..
I'm not sharing this as a confession of imperfection. Quite the contrary...
I'm sharing this for every one of us who at one moment or another, stared into a non existent mirror and perplexedly asked ourselves , just what exactly have we gotten ourselves into?!?
Not in a bad way, not in the end of the month, end of the year or end of the night panic state all parents are familiar with, but the one where you keenly perceive all the amazing blessings and abundances entrusted to you and wonder for a moment, what God is thinking, putting that giant chess board before you...
Not overwhelmed or even concerned. Just curious...
Our incompetences are not the problem.
No more than they were for the two children who laughed and played ....
The important things, they knew...
That their dads loved them and kept them safe, on his lap.
That nothing was too big. Not the mistakes or the successes...
And that how they treated each other was the only real measure, when all else passed..
So I sit on Gods lap, for the most part oblivious...
It is harder to remember, as I age, that the mistakes and failures are not as big as I would like to believe, and not nearly as important.
I do my best to walk in Faith and play fairly and kindly.
I trust that I don't need to know everything, if I trust my soul to the One who does.
...and that two children happily inept, can teach much..
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