December 1 – “New Rules”

Well, we only had two folks available for our Hanging of the Greens at church last night.  Me and Chris.  Not exactly the date night we would have imagined, but we did enjoy the time together, I suppose.  And the “date” is not over yet.  We managed to get the artificial tree put together, but not decorated.  No lights.  And Chris would just not have a Christmas tree with no lights.  So we stopped there until we can buy a strand or two.  Then we moved on to hanging the icicle lights and garland all around the ceiling of the worship center.  We completed about half way before giving up in exhaustion.  I guess two and a half hours constitutes “giving it the old college try,” wouldn’t you say?  We’ll make our trip to WalMart and get the rest done later in the week.

Now, back to some of the hijinks of the Vaughan clan over the Thanksgiving gathering. 

Caleb, the consummate Baylor Bears fan much to the chagrin of his HBU-legacy top heavy family, on hearing that TCU is ranked higher than Baylor in spite of losing to them: “The judges had mind control.  They made a bad decision.” 
There you go.  Even a five-year-old can figure that one out.

Speaking of Caleb, he invited me to join him in a toy soldier battle.  Green G.I. Joes vs. Multicolored army men.  The only guy painted white was obviously from a different set, apparently the Revolutionary War, judging by his ponytail and English-looking garb.  But here he was in an obviously World War II laden environment.  He had, however, been singled out as different right away.  The poor colonist was standing alone underneath an overturned basket.  Now that piqued my curiosity, so I asked Caleb who that guy in prison was.  In his all-knowing way, Caleb got me up to speed:  “He’s the captured creature from another galaxy.”  Ah.  Strangely, that made perfect sense to me. 

I didn’t do so well in the battle, however.  I didn’t know the rules had changed so drastically since I was a young lad playing much similar games.  Of course our games were so long ago that the main characters were civil war blues versus grays.  Way back then, our approach was to find a marble and take turns rolling it at each other’s army.  The marble wreaked similar havoc to what a well-placed bombardment would have done.  Caleb and I didn’t have a marble, so I found a small piece of plastic (oddly, it contained two tiny feet without a body.  Gee, wonder where that could have come from).  I tossed the tiny bomb at his guys and actually knocked one over on my first try.  Not a good idea, I found out quickly.  Caleb performed the fastest surgical procedure in history and the guy I just blew up was miraculously restored to his place on the battlefield in mere seconds.  With a “Tsk” of impatience, I was informed, “You are supposed to do it this way, DadDad,” followed by a demonstration.  He systematically flicked my guys to the ground with a snap of his fingers.  Oh, and the “demonstration” rapidly turned into a massacre.  He plowed right into my forces and destroyed every one of them in mere seconds.  Come to find out, ignorance of the law is no excuse.  Fortunately, Caleb’s compassionate side then reared its understanding head.  I got another chance.  Meticulously, we set the armies back up, and he carefully walked me through the proper process one more time.  And after my first successful flick he encouraged me mightily, “Nice job, DadDad.”  Basking in the glow of encouragement from my instructor, I sat back on my heels to enjoy the moment.  And he wiped out my entire army once again.  And I’m pretty sure I heard the tiny white inter-dimensional traveler under the basket laughing at me.

Galatians 5:14 says, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Father, thank you for setting us free from burdensome rules and basket-shaped prisons of our own making.  Amen.