Shopping Carts

The other day I was in Canadian Tire looking for a Mother’s Day gift…  (I know eh?  I married the perfect woman!) …any ways, I’m in Canadian Tire when a dad passes me pushing his little girl in a shopping cart.  I’ve always really liked the way shopping carts are set up – it’s intimate.  Not shopping ☻ but being face-to-face with your child.  I don’t know who designed the first shopping cart but they have my thanks!

So, there’s this dad and his daughter inside this Canadian Tire and just as they passed me I hear the little girl whine, “Daddy, I don’t like this… this is boring.”

I don’t know how long they had been in the store, but their cart was empty.  I can’t imagine they had been there very long (that’s ‘man-think’ I know).   We were well into to the store.  They would have had to pass through the automotive section and then the athletics department.  The little girl, positioned in the cart as she was, had a clear picture of where they had been.

“Daddy, I don’t like this… this is boring.”

She’s young I know, but I wonder if there might come a day when she longs to be in that seat facing Daddy.  Feeling safe, protected.  Will she regret not appreciating the ‘boredom’ of shopping with dad?  Will she regret not taking more time to look him full in the face?

There is a parable there.  To be situated in life in such a way that I am always looking Daddy in the face!  To let Him dictate where we go.

Of course, if I’m not looking at my Father, like the child in the cart, I end up looking over Daddy’s shoulder at where I’ve come from… the past… and so I base all my prayers, my statements, my complaints on the assumption that what was, is what will always be…

“Daddy, I don’t like this… this is boring.”

…what she didn’t see, and what we often miss, is that we are moving in a direction that will take us out of our past and into a place of joy and delight.  See, dad was heading for the toy section.  If only she could have turned her head to see, she would have found the bright blues and reds and pinks and greens of a section more to her liking!

Sometimes we are so focussed the past, we forget it’s the past – it’s what we’ve left behind. 

The Father is taking us somewhere…

The Father is taking you somewhere…  or …He wants to.

my 2c