I am a Childish Adult

Learning to Love

At our after-school gift exchange, the kids stood in a circle, eyes wide and eager as they held shiny presents in their tiny hands. I read a story, and each time they heard the words “left” or “right,” they passed those shiny presents accordingly. They giggled and sighed as they watched the presents pass around the circle.

And then, at the end, each held one gift.

We told them they could exchange their gifts, but only if there was mutual agreement, and only if they did so before they unwrapped their packages.

The mystery was part of the fun.

And of course, there was a chaotic shuffling of presents back and forth, the kids all cheering and yelling as though we were at a stock exchange.

But when the dust settled, one kid was lacking a gift.

“Where is your gift?” I asked Albert.

“I ate it,” he answered. When I gave him a quizzical look, he explained. “I traded my gift to Michael for a fortune cookie, and I ate the cookie already.”

A fortune cookie??

I confronted Michael. He explained, unabashed, that since Albert had agreed to trade for just a cookie, a cookie was all he got. So Michael had ended up with two gifts; Albert with none.

“Where is Albert’s gift?!” I demanded.

He had given it away to someone else. After tricking a younger, more trusting child out of his gift, Michael had simply given it away to someone else. And Albert, gullible and clueless, had accepted the cookie as fair trade for his gift.

I thought of Esau, tricked into selling his birthright for a bowl of stew — something so precious for something so fleeting.

I was so disappointed and angry. Even worse, the other kids admired Michael for being “smart” enough to trick Albert out of his gift. But, then again, I thought to myself, they are just children. Maybe I’m expecting too much from them. They are still learning how to behave, how to be generous and kind.

An End to Childish Ways

But, as I thought about it more, I realized something else.

It’s true that children are still developing their ethics and integrity, but isn’t it true that we, as adults, are also still developing our own ethics and integrity? Does that process ever truly end?

After all, Jacob and Esau were adults.

Perhaps no one has called me out recently, but I have certainly committed crimes that are as manipulative and selfish as stealing a child’s Christmas gift.

And, like the children I work with, I still have much to learn about how to behave and how to be generous and kind.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:11-13)

I have put an end to some of my childish ways, but not all of them.

Like Jacob and Michael, I know how to be dishonest in order to get what I want from those closest to me.  And like Paul, I am still on the journey toward abiding in faith, hope, and love — doing my best to grow out of my childish ways.

Hand-made Humans

This past Sunday, the lectionary text included the creation narrative from Genesis 1. The church year is entering “common time” now, and over the next few months, the lectionary will be all about Genesis. So it’s the perfect time for me to start reading Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis.

In her essay about creation, Zornberg notes that humans are made by God’s hands, while the rest of creation is made by His speech:

What does it mean to be created by the hands of God, rather than by His word – (“Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water”)? Man comes to be differently, it seems. Even before God breathes the breath of life into him, the circumstances of his physical making are radically different. (Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, 18)

It reminded me of Rainer Maria Rilke’s folktale re-telling of the creation story, “The Tale of God’s Hands.” If you’ve never read Stories of God, I recommend it.

Now, for such states of mind there is nothing so healing as work. And busy as He was with the fabrication of human beings, God quickly regained His happy state of mind. He had the eyes of the angel before Him as mirrors, and in them He took the measure of His own features and slowly and carefully formed, on a ball in his lap, the first face. (Rainer Maria Rilke, Stories of God, 5)

Patrick Steyn, “Muddy Hands” (Photograph available here)

So this week I’m sharing my own reflections on God’s hand-making of humanity…

This God, who makes with voice,
who calls the deep and the mountain into being,
who heralds the crawling small and the roiling sea monster,
this same God
forms humans with His hands.
He is speechless at their making,
until he blesses them.
This God molds them with his muddy, worn fingers
until they are ready to be life-breathed with his ruah,
his blowing wind of being.
And then, mysteriously, they are.
They stand, these humans,
and their hearts pump, slowly at first, sporadic,
until the blood catches up, eyes flutter open,
and there — there – says God, is good.
And he pushes his thumb into the small of their backs,
an image of Him alone,
for them to carry into the world of crawling and roiling,
to set them apart
as Holy, wholly His.
“Be mine,” he whispers to them
(as if preparing a valentine)
when he sets them into space,
“be mine and no other’s.”
And there is a precious moment where they look only to him
before their eyes go wide at the world,
a precious moment never forgotten
by either –
not by Him with mud-stained, tired hands,
not by tall-standing, thumb-printed creatures –
a memory held in deepest spirit being,
until forever unites them again.

Friends, you are indeed the precious handiwork of God, whose name is Majesty. What insights (new or old) do you find in the creation narrative? What does it mean that humanity is created “in God’s image”?