Riley's M&M

I am an addict! I have discovered that I am addicted to my grandson. Every so often, I just have to get into that Camry and drive 16 hours so I can hold him while he drools on my shirt. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it makes perfect sense to me.

I just got back from one of those excursions. He’s gotten to the place now, that I can take him out by myself and go do stuff. One of our favorite places to go is Walmart. Ok, I know, if you’re a man here, that’s probably something else you don’t understand, but I have to tell you that Walmart is pretty cool as a Grandson/granddad hangout. Now the Walmart in the little Arkansas town where Jenny lives is doubly blessed because, not only can you ride around and play with the toys in the toy aisle, they even have a place where you can take your kids and ride rides for 50 cents a pop.

Well, he’s not quite old enough to know what’s cool yet, so he loves to ride the little Winnie-the-Pooh airplane. And you know, being a crazy old grandpa, I get to stand there and sing the little Winne-the-Pooh song while he rides. Just in case you’re wondering, the ride will play that song 5 times for each ride, so since I think he rode it about 10 times the other day, I’ve now heard it 50 times in the last 3 weeks. That may explain why this sermon didn’t make any sense, I don’t know.

Anyway, we were there and he had ridden it a couple of times, but he wanted to go again, but granddad was out of quarters so we left, right? No! Not on your life. I got him out, and we went over to the dollar changing machine. Now Riley is very active and easily distracted, so while I’m standing there waiting for my quarters to drop out into the tray, he spies something laying on the floor. It’s an old M&M or skittle that someone dropped who knows when. It’s covered in grime and the dust of a few buffing cycles from the maintenance crew. But that doesn’t matter to Riley. He goes for it and, when he’s about to stick it into his mouth I grab his hand and stop him. You’d have thought I slapped him in the face. He started crying and screaming and acted like I was Jeffrey Dahmer instead of his g-daddy. Here we are a few feet away from Winnie-the-Pooh. I’ve got 4 quarters, enough for two more rides. I’m getting ready to make his day by letting him ride, but he’s standing there screaming over a dirty M&M which would have tasted bad and probably made him sick.

You get the picture? God has good things for us, but we get distracted by the things that we think we need. He wants to give us good things, but if He’s going to give us good things, we have to ask Him for them, and then we have to surrender to His will realizing that, ultimately, He knows what is good for us so much better than we know what is good for ourselves. He will give us our daily bread if we will ask. He’ll do His part, if we will do ours!