Lessons from Lego

When his Lego skills left a toddler unimpressed, Jeremy Suisted learnt a difficult lesson in thankfulness. He reflects on the importance of that small word ‘thanks’, and on its extravagant implications in the unseen Kingdom of God.

A few weeks ago, I was playing Lego with one of my friend’s kids. Pieces were strewn across the floor, and we were creating all kinds of freeform cars and buildings.

Midway through our Lego session, I noticed something. This boy is a polite kid, and 90 per cent of the time, when he’d ask me to help look for a specific piece, he’d add ‘please’ on the end.

But occasionally, he’d leave it off, and his request became more of an order. ‘Find me the chassis.’

Now, apart from my general unease that this pre-schooler knew more about correct mechanical names of a car than I did, I’d find myself feeling jarred the rare time when he neglected to say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’.

So I devoted myself and sorted through the mosaic of scattered Lego pieces to build a cannon-touting Western carriage—painstakingly following the instructions and hunting out each obscure piece. I finally completed the construction and proudly handed it over to him.

‘Thanks,’ he said. He then put it aside and played with something else, neglecting my masterpiece.

I wasn’t crushed—I won’t let a toddler get the better of me *single tear*—but it made me think. Why is it that we have to be taught gratitude? Why is this something that doesn’t come naturally to us?

You’d think that a child would recognise that their very existence and continued care was a total gift, provided by their parents. Every meal, every hug, every trip—it is all gift. Yet, children need to be taught to be thankful. And perhaps, so do we.

A year of living biblically

When someone does something nice for me, I have learnt to say ‘thanks’ and to be thankful. But for the general grace of life and the glorious moments, I realised that I have cultivated a life that at best, takes them for granted. At worst, I have come to expect beauty and comfort to be a given—and am more angered at their absence than thankful for their presence.

Am I thankful for the glass of water after a hot run? Am I thankful for the ability to run? For the smell of coffee? For the laughter of friends? For the first moment of each day, as sleep gives way to life?

Esquire editor A. J. Jacobs spent a year trying to live by all the moral codes of the Bible. In his book—The Year of Living Biblically (a hilarious and insightful read)—Jacobs took the verse ‘give thanks in all circumstances’ literally, and forced himself into the habit of perpetually saying ‘thanks!’ to anything good he noticed. He writes:

It’s an odd way to live. But also kind of great and powerful. I’ve never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day … When you’re thanking God for every little thing—every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water—you can’t help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all.

When we pursue thankfulness, it turns resources into delights. It transforms the normal into unique. Life becomes more colourful, food more tasty, friendships become sweeter. Each moment is charged with life.

Learning from the Psalms

In the Psalter, a famous verse says, ‘This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.’

I’ve read and sung this verse many times before, but have missed the claim it is making. Although it points to a great day of joy and celebration—the resurrection of Christ—these words have also been sung and prayed many days before and many days since.

It starts with a ‘this’ and a roar! This—this day—this one specifically, is a day that has been made and is worthy of joy and thankfulness. Each day is a gift, and each day is worthy of thanks.

Saying ‘thanks’ makes us more thankful. I have learnt this the painstaking way, of trying to record moments each day which are worthy of thanks. At first, my list was embarrassingly short—I saw all of life as something I expected.

But as I began to record moments and reflect on each day, suddenly my gratitude grew. A tiny green sprout, to be sure, but it slowly infiltrates to unexpected moments of my day—and I find myself speaking ‘thanks’ to God in the mundane and the ordinary.

From the way the sun shines on the road, to the smell of coffee in a café, a kind word from a stranger or a great moment with a friend—each of these is a gift, and each is worthy of thanks.

Is this your rabbit?

Giving thanks is far from a meaningless platitude; it is a doorway into an invisible kingdom, where we see things unseen.

The world is full of the invisible. As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of physics will know, we live in the midst of invisible waves and hums. Right now, I am standing in a cocktail of AM radio waves (and their slightly cooler FM cousins), WiFi signals, electromagnetic pulses, photons bouncing around the room, microwaves from space and bizarre world of quantum particles.

We know these invisible hums and energies are there around us, but we can’t see them. We’re not on their wavelength, so we live and move within them, aware-yet-unaware.

A few months ago, I was chatting with my Uncle Clive. He had been up in Kingsland, Auckland, and was walking back from a cafe, when suddenly a lady appeared with a rabbit. She wasn’t a magician, but she stopped my uncle and asked him, ‘Is this your rabbit?’

Clive politely told her he didn’t own a rabbit. She thanked him and, told him she’d found this rabbit wandering along—so was going door-to-door in Kingsland, trying to find the owner.

Clive left, about to go on with his day. But then he stopped, and went back. ‘I knew that there was a good story there,’ he said. ‘What drives a person to grab a lost rabbit and go door-to-door, trying to find the rabbit’s owners?’

So Clive went back and chatted with this person. I don’t know what happened to the rabbit, but I do remember Clive’s words, ‘There was a good story there.’

Through the bustle of the everyday, he had heard the hum of something more—and had decided to chase it. To look behind the scenes, and to discover the extraordinary behind the ordinary.

Jesus among the ordinary

When I read the gospels, one thing of late has been jumping out at me. Almost all of the people who Jesus encounters remain nameless. They aren’t the famous names of history, but are the ordinary people of the everyday.
The descriptions of these people stress this: a blind man, sick mother-in-law, leper. A woman caught sleeping around. A man who can’t walk. A Roman.

Who are these people? They are the people we walk past every day. The lawyer. The solo mum. The entrepreneur. The immigrant. The teacher. The tradesman. The student.

Again, when one of the earliest followers of Jesus shared the story of God’s redemption with a non-Jew, the only description we get is of him as an Ethiopian eunuch. No age or name—just a brief title.

These moments of love, of possibility and of depth are not hidden away at some Christian conference, at the top of a mountain or within the pages of a dense theological book. They are here in the everyday. Each moment is charged with the hum of possibility and of a sense of yearning for God’s Kingdom to break through.

The hum in the ordinary

Frank Laubach was a missionary to the Phillipines who decided to focus his life on seeing the potential and extra-ordinary behind each moment.

After spending years building the habit of continual prayer, Laubach remarked, ‘All during the day, in the chinks of time between the things we find ourselves obliged to do, there are the moments when our minds ask: “What next?” In these chinks of time, ask him: “Lord, think thy thoughts in my mind. What is on thy mind for me to do now?’ When we ask Christ, “What next?” we tune in and give him a chance to pour his ideas through our enkindled imagination. If we persist, it becomes a habit.’

Perhaps it is no accident that the most common miracle of Jesus’ was healing the blind. Perhaps even this is a message of grace and a hint that in following Jesus, we all need to have our eyes opened to the hum of God’s Kingdom and the possibility that is in each moment.

So today, why not pray and ask to have your eyes opened to what God is doing around you? Why not follow the lead of Laubach, and ask Christ, ’What next?’ Why not silence your soul and listen for the hum of the Kingdom and the story behind the ordinary?

Jeremy Suisted is an innovation consultant and blogger, whose articles you can find at www.jeremysuisted.com.

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by Ingrid Barratt (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 23 July 2016, pp 20-21
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.