Repost from Nov 2, 2005

I find the parent/child metaphor still to be the most fruitful for understanding our relationship with God. Today I was shopping at Costco and I only had Ben with me. Ben is 5. Because my family is so large I usually get a flat and this time the wheels weren’t up to snuf. I pushed that cart through the store with a few hundred pounds of groceries on it, with the sticky wheels and Ben was right in front of me with his hands on the bar pushing it too between my arms. He’s huffing and puffing and talking about all of the work it was to push that cart but of course I was the one doing all the real work. Then the thought struck me, this is just like leading a church, but in this case I am Ben and God is me. Sometimes I push it forward when Ben isn’t paying attention, yet he is oblivious to my pushing. Sometimes I’m steering and he’s not sure he wants to go that way. Ben, however, usually thinks that he’s doing the pushing when in fact I am. It also made me think about prayer. Ben’s pushing is really like prayer. Often if he wants to go somewhere I’ll indulge him as long as it is moving us in the general direction we need to go in.