“Look Mum, my puppet’s waving.”
“Look Mum, his mouth opens and shuts.”
“Look Mum, now he’s dancing.”
However, the strings soon became tangled and he grew tired of it—a puppet that was enjoyed one minute and forgotten the next.
Despite the frustrations of parenthood, we wouldn’t turn our children into puppets that we control one minute and forget the next. We’d like our children to grow into the unique people they are. We love their individuality and their idiosyncrasies. We don’t want to squash their creativity or their distinctiveness.
Likewise, God doesn’t want puppets. He created us with the ability to choose, think, reason and make decisions. God didn’t create us with strings he could pull to make us perform.
Puppets cannot choose to be in a relationship, but we can and this is what God desires. People who will freely choose to share life, who live and laugh and linger in his presence. He wants to live in us and refine us, but not take over the personality he gave us.
Furthermore, he doesn’t forget us if our lives are like a tangled mess of strings, but he will work with us to free us.
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