I love this Scary world!

Not everything about over consumerization is bad. For one thing, it makes a fertile ground for the imagination of one of my all time favorite authors, Richard Scary. For those of you with children, Richard Scary is probably a current favorite, but for those of you without children, you may have to think back to your childhood to remember his books. He created a whole series of books that showed a series of small animal figures in various scenes from real life helping to illustrate the hundreds of thousands of things we use every day that a young child might not know by name. For instance, an incredibly detailed picture of an airport that would take up two whole pages and would show, and label, everything from the control tower to the baggage handlers. Somewhere in the picture, you could always find the inch worm and the little fox and some pigs. It was a great way to learn the words for things (I even have a German version for learning the German words for things like Banhoff).

I was thinking about that today as I stood waiting in front of my work building waiting for an insurance inspector to arrive. I work in an industrial area and there are tons of trucks that pass our office every day. So as I stood there and waited, I watched a dump truck go by, and a plumbing van, and a cable truck, and an SUV, and a small fire truck, and a train rolled down the tracks nearby, and a helicopter buzzed through the air, and an inch worm rolled across the sidewalk nearby on a skateboard - and suddenly I was viewing the world through a Richard Scary lens. All of this variety, all of this wonderful variety, and everyone here with a purpose and a means of transport. I wasn't looking at traffic congestion. I wasn't looking at global warming. I was looking at this idealized and wonderfully diverse world, and it made me smile.

I spent the weekend playing youth group games at church and then hanging out with friends and then spending time on the ground with my nephew playing cars - what a wonderful weekend. God doesn't just want us to view His world through the lens of a child, he wants us to become truly childlike. He wants us to play Sardines. And he wants us to dodge balls. And he wants us to pretend that cars are getting in line for Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland - because that's what cars really want to do. They don't want to break down and guzzle gas. Cars want to ride rides. Because when cars ride rides, we are not hurting each other, we are not hurting God - we are spending time with one another in community and happiness.

Nobody said life had to be hard... we just make it that way.