While Baking with a Two Year Old

I spend a lot of time with two-year olds for someone who isn't a mom.

One thing that has been very funny and interesting about spending so much time with two-year olds is how much they remind me of my relationship with God.  I cannot speak for everyone, but oftentimes my relationship with God resembles a two-year-old girl and her dad who loves her very much.

Have you ever baked cookies with a two year old?  It's adventurous or insane or a little bit of both.  Recently, I asked my niece Emma if she could help me make chocolate chip cookies.  Her excitement told me that this idea was totally worth whatever trouble I was signing up for.  She immediately began pushing a chair over by herself to stand at the counter.  She was eager to help and wanted to follow my directions.  She tried breaking the eggs but the first egg ended up missing the bowl and then she straight up dropped the entire egg shell in the cookie mixture.  She was just SO EXCITED that whenever I wasn't actively engaging her with a task she took initiative.  She tried scooping more sugar by herself into the mixing bowl or sticking her freshly-licked fingers back in the cookie dough.

I was constantly finding ways to include her while simultaneously cleaning up the mess and keeping her from falling off the chair.  She couldn't read the recipe or measure the ingredients.  It took twice as much time for us to make and made twice as much of a mess.  Still, when her mom tried the first cookie warm from the oven, Emma proudly proclaimed, "me and Auntie Eri made these."  And she was right, and I got to share a memory of my life with a little girl I love very much.

I had once described to a friend that I feel like living life for God probably looks more like a little kid baking with her dad.  (Even though I've never actually baked with my dad.). I explained how just like baking with a small child, God doesn't need us and could do it faster and with less of a mess but he wants to include us in his plan and enjoys it.  He will make sure that the cookies come out right.  We cannot mess up his plan even if we mess up.  Let's face it, we just aren't that powerful.

Recently, I heard a sermon that made a similar analogy of a toddler going to work with his dad who was a chief architect and builder of the most magnificent sky scraper ever seen.  The toddler brings his toy hammer and begins to hammer at the structure, and the father is overjoyed to have the child he loves spend the day with him.

It's easy to read metaphors like those and think that the point is what we do is pointless.  But the real point is: you are loved and valued by God like a loving parent values his or her own child.  He takes delight in you and wants to spend time with you.  He wants you to share in his plan to love people and draw them closer to himself.

He invites us in.
To spend time with him.
To join in his work.
To be his child.

"See what great love our Father has lavished on us that we should become children of God..."
-1 John 3:1

In a world where we strive to define our identity, God reminds us that he created us and  calls us his beloved children.