Self-Awareness
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” Genesis 1:31 KJV
As I sit here watching my three-year-old grandson run around, I can’t help but think back about the different stages of life. Honestly, I can’t remember when I was three, but I’m sure I was probably a lot like he is. Roman’s, my grandson’s, world really revolves around only one thing: Roman.
Don’t get me wrong, Roman is a really sweet boy, but his outlook on life is that life’s purpose is to serve him. “No” is sometimes his favorite word. If he doesn’t want to do it, or eat it, guess what? He’s not going to do it or eat it.
Fun and getting his way are Roman’s two favorite things. Mimi, as he calls my wife, gets no greater joy than bringing Roman happiness. She will pretty much wear herself out trying to make things fun for him.
Did I tell you that Roman is a very smart three-year-old? He knows the best way to his second favorite thing, getting his way, is to go through Mimi. When she’s around, he never lets her get too far out of his sight. He knows if Mimi is around, he has a much better chance of getting his way, no matter what that way is.
In my wife’s defense, she wants to be a grandmother, not a mother to Roman. She wants his eyes always glowing when he sees her. That is not always possible when you are a parent. Things like discipline sometimes interferes with a child’s glowing vision as he looks at his parents.
Mimi loves teaching Roman things. I guess that is the teacher in her. Since Roman thinks the world of Mimi, he soaks it all in. That probably accounts for a lot of his smartness.
Despite his smartness, Roman doesn’t know all there is to know about life. Perhaps having a short time where the world revolves around you is a good thing. Soon enough, you blend in with the rest of society. Eventually other people don’t solve all your problems or fill your every request.
“There sure are a lot of trees,” must have been their thoughts. The nothingness was so beautiful. How could anyone not love this place?
Well, there was one group of people who were rather upset by their admiration. It was the ones who claimed the land was theirs. How dare these people think that they could just come and set up their own little houses on their land?
But the people really wanted their houses on this land. So they had to get some help to evict the people who thought it was theirs. The price of this help, and protection, was that the people had to obey the rules of their rescuers. In addition, to help pay for this protection, they would have to pay this government. That dirty three-letter word: tax, entered their vocabulary.
Still it wasn’t that bad. They had a beautiful backyard where they could grow tomatoes and raise cows. There was also room to dream big as to what their little neighborhood could become.
Eventually, the government saw that the people they were protecting had a much better life than they did in their homeland. “That’s just not right,” they thought. So they decided to impose more taxes and more rules on the people they were protecting.
At first, the people just put up with the higher taxes and more laws. But it just didn’t stop. More taxes came, and even harsher laws. The people began to tire of all this oppression.
So most of the neighborhoods elected people to go and form a big group to see if there was anything that could be done about this. They didn’t really want to get the government angry at them, they just wanted it to back off a little and just let them live their peaceful lives.
Things were kind of still. It was very dark. There was no wind, nor sound. It wasn’t really creepy, it was more like an emptiness.
Maybe a better way to describe it would be to try to imagine a very stressful period in your life. You know what I’m talking about. It’s one of those moments, where sitting in a period of nothingness would seem like paradise. Oh, just to have a brief timeout from this thing we call life.
This perfect intermission would have no one pulling on you or trying to get answers out of you. The phone wouldn’t ring. You just shut your eyes to a complete state of relaxation. There is no breeze to distract you. Just complete tranquility.
We all dream of those moments of just getting away from it all. There would be no problems. Stress would not even be in our vocabulary. Our muscles wouldn’t tense up and we wouldn’t have to worry about our blood pressure. Complete calm would be the dessert we were craving.
Imagine for a moment, a relaxation just like that. Now think about it as if that was your every moment. It is here where our Bible story begins.
At the very beginning of Genesis, there was nothing. No light, no darkness, no sound, no plants, no animals, no water, no rain, no sunshine, no laughter, no shouting, no traffic jams, no kids running around, no bills to pay, no stress, no…(you fill in the blanks). Nothing! That is all there was: nothing.
There was no pressure being put on anything. Headaches hadn’t been invented yet. Ears were a concept that hadn’t come around yet, so, there was no purpose for listening. No laws had been voted into action, so there was nothing to obey.
But God had this nothingness and He decided He wanted to do something with it. So, from nothing He created everything. It turned out pretty good, because the Bible mentioned that several times in the beginning of creation.
Like most things you’ve purchased, there needed to be a manual. This manual had to tell you, not only how to put the thing together, but it had to also tell you how to operate it once you had it together. In other words, there were rules you had to follow to make it work perfectly.
Our little colonies didn’t really want a war with England. The thought of independence probably never really entered their minds. They just wanted England to back off of us and to stop treating us so badly. We weren’t second-class citizens.
We were just Englishmen who lived across the pond. But England saw a cash cow with her colonies in America and these backwoods colonists had no right to consider themselves equal to their much more civilized English brothers.
Sensing, probably correctly, that the English attitude wasn’t going to change, the colonists gathered in Philadelphia. They tried, and they tried, to get England to understand their plight. There seemed to be only one solution: independence.
Let’s think about independence for a moment. What did that actually mean? Well, at the very beginning, it actually meant nothing. You don’t just wake up one day, and boom, you’re a new country. It was more like a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be written on.
At one of these meetings, it was decided that they just needed to write the King a “Dear John” letter. The biggest problem with this, to deny your homeland your citizenship, translated into treason. At this time, treason had a very stiff punishment. That punishment was called death.
Who in their right mind would be stupid enough to write a letter to the most powerful man in the world at the time, the King, and tell him “adios.” I have an idea. Let’s take the youngest member of our group and possibly the grumpiest one in the group, add in three more for good measure, and throw them in a room and let them come up with a letter.
As the five of them gathered, they quickly realized that one of them was perhaps one of the greatest writers of his time. He really had a way with words. So the four others decided he should be the one to actually write the letter. Being the youngest in the entire group, not just this little group, probably gave him very little wiggle room to get out of the assignment. But he didn’t.
So the four of them threw all kinds of ideas at the poor young man and told him to go write something beautiful. The poor young lad had a tender ego, but it was an ego no less. Each change they suggested to his creation felt like a stab at his heart.
Finally, after many changes, the finished product was released. The entire group was so proud of his document that they all signed it. The leader even boldly signed his name in gigantic letters. Off to England went the letter.
I’m not sure what the colonists thought would happen when their letter arrived on the King’s desk. Despite its elegant language, it basically called him a big meanie and he better just leave them alone.
The Second Continental Congress set up a committee of five men to write what would become known as our Declaration of Independence. Those five were: grumpy old John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and the youngest delegate to the convention: Thomas Jefferson.
With a blank sheet of paper, and with nothing more than a few ideas, Thomas Jefferson drafted what would become one of the most-read documents in history: The Declaration of Independence.
The other night, Roman was going to have his first night away from his Mom and Dad. He was going to spend the night at Mimi’s house. Roman was very excited about this. Can you imagine getting your way all the time and having total attention paid to you all the time? Oh boy, in his mind, this was going to be great.
You see, Mom makes him do things like eat good foods. At Mimi’s he can run and play. He doesn’t have to eat when he’s told or even eat what is on his plate. If he doesn’t like it, Mimi will just get him something else.
Oh, when Mommy needs a break, she just tells Roman to find something to do for a little while. After all, there are dinners to fix and chores to be done. A three-year-old finds no interest in any of those things. Meanwhile, at Mimi’s, Mimi will run back and forth trying to entertain Roman long enough so he doesn’t get disappointed or bored.
Then came the hard part: going to bed. I’m sure there were thoughts of: “I don’t understand, Mimi. This is something I don’t really want to do,” running through his head. “Mimi, I think you might have forgotten how this works. When I’m around you, I’m only supposed to do things I want to do,” were thoughts that puzzled him.
Still, Roman was willing to give it a try. When eternity reached its limits, or about thirty minutes later, Roman’s world came crashing down. “I want my Mommy,” became his plea. Roman very rarely cries. Even when he hurts himself, his tears are usually brief.
Despite the fact that his Mimi was right there beside him, he started crying. He wouldn’t stop. He repeated over and over again, “I want my Mommy.” After about an hour of this, I went into the room to see if I could help.
I tried to get him excited about the next morning and the things we could do together. The big tears running down his face nearly broke my heart. He seemed to settle down and I left the room. Almost as soon as I shut the door, the “I want my Mommy” cries started all over again.
Eventually Roman did get to sleep. There were no eternal scars the next morning. He was all ready for another fun-filled day. It was almost like the night before never happened.
When Roman’s Mom came and picked him up, he still clung onto Mimi. It was like he was pretending nothing bothered him. As he was put in the car to leave, his Mom asked if he was ready to stay another night with Mimi. Surprisingly, he admitted that he didn’t think that was a very good idea.
One of those ingredients God added to make things work perfectly in the beginning was man. Right off the bat, God realized this man needed a companion and he created a woman. God was like the perfect grandparent. He gave these two everything they could possibly want. Nothing was too good for them.
I imagine these two people realized how much God loved them and how He would give them pretty much anything they asked for. Things were perfect.
Pop has given Roman just about every one of his die-cast race cars. That is, except one. On one of Pop’s work-related outings, he got to meet the NASCAR driver Ward Burton. When Pop was able to find one of Ward’s die cast cars, he set it way up high on a top shelf. That is one car Pop will not even let Roman touch.
Of course, Roman really wants to get, and play with that car. He has even suggested that either Mimi or Pop could easily get a ladder and get it down for him. Finally, Roman has come to understand that the yellow car is only to look at, not to touch.
Still, given the opportunity, I bet Roman would be more than willing to play with it. Then, of course, it would just become another one of his many other cars.
God kind of had that same rule for Adam and Eve. They could have anything they wanted, except the fruit of one tree. Now with all the cars in their toy box, no, I mean with all the other plants to get fruit from, which one do you think they wanted to eat from?
When God wasn’t looking they snuck into Pop’s room, climbed a ladder, and got Pop’s car down. No, no, I’m getting my stories mixed up. When God wasn’t looking an evil snake talked them into eating the only fruit that God told them not to.
Adam and Eve weren’t very good actors, because when God came looking for them, they hid from Him. “Why are you hiding?” He asked. I guess lying hadn’t been invented yet, because they spilled the beans of what they had done. Let’s just say, God wasn’t any too happy with their little experience.
God ended up banning them from the garden. As a punishment, He invented work and rules, and we have been paying for it ever since.
Out of nothingness can come greatness. God had nothing. Out of it He created everything. Thomas Jefferson had a blank sheet of paper. Out of that he crafted one of the greatest documents of all time: The Declaration of Independence.
That greatness can sometimes vanish. That disappearance is often the result of one thing: selfishness. We want to tax those who seem to have it better than we do. What’s wrong with wanting, and grabbing that fruit on the forbidden tree or the car off the top shelf?
Magically, paradise vanishes when we possess that which our greedy hands reach for. There always seems to be another thing our heart desires. The thirst to please ourselves only seems to get worse with each gulp we take.
Look no further than our own nation. That great land that Thomas Jefferson envisioned when he wrote the Declaration of Independence doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Why? We have more freedoms than any time in history. Even the poorest among us has it better than almost anyone else in the world.
Yet no one seems happy. People want government to be more of what they want and less of what the other person wants. There is no room to feel your neighbor’s pain when your eyes are focused on the character in the mirror.
You see, paradise only works when you take the focus off yourself. That’s the way God designed it. Government can’t grant it to you, no matter how beautiful their decrees are written. A grandmother can’t always wave a magic wand and have it suddenly appear. Even the most tempting tree can’t produce a fruit to quench its desire.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Sometimes I forget that the most important one is not the one looking back at me in the mirror. Help me to do my part to help paradise work. That means I need You to give me the strength to look past my selfish desires. Amen.
