I'm Wide Awake, I'm Not Sleeping

I love both my children very much. Honestly, I do, but at 3.30 this morning, when 2 year old decided it was morning and he'd like to get up now, I struggled! The problem was, he'd been asleep, he'd woken up, so it must be morning. Time to get up and play - great!

But Daddy didn't agree. So some discussion took place - quickly and quietly, so as not to wake our 6 year old who was (and thankfully remained) fast asleep in the other bedroom. And so he snuggled back down, and spent the next hour or so trying to go back to sleep, with myself or my wife lying next to him on the cold hard floor... making sure he did actually settle.

So, while I was laid on the cold floor, I started to think (scary thing to do at 4am)... From his perspective, it seemed to make sense, he knew what he wanted, and why, and he was going to do it. But as his parents, with our greater experience and understanding, we knew better - we had a wider perspective, and we knew that if we let him wake up at 3.30am, the rest of the day was going to be difficult, to say the least! And we knew, better than he himself did, what was good for him.

But of course we have a parent with far greater knowledge and experience than us. We have a God who created the entire Universe, with a word. A God who doesn't need a Large Hadron Collider to find the Bosun-Higgs particle, because he made it. Who doesn't need a Kepler telescope to find other planets orbiting other suns, because he put them there. A God who designed and made each of us, who our every thought even before we were conceived. A God who knows every detail of our innermost workings - our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams and our needs, better than we do. And a God who wants good things for us, and for the people around.

And yet, how often do I, with my limited human perspective, think I know better than him. How often do I say "not your will Lord, but mine, be done", when really I should be saying "not my will Lord, but yours, be done"...

So, next time I'm lying awake, wondering why my 2 year old thinks he knows better than his 35 year old Dad, maybe I'll stop and wonder why this 35-year-old child thinks he knows better than his Heavenly Dad.