One common thread connecting grandparents and their grandchildren is the world of toys…grandparents love to buy them, grandkids love to get them! I learned that fact immediately after meeting my first grandchild, Mason. After a nail-biting, nerve-wracking trip across the Pennsylvania turnpike on a snowy New Year’s Eve, I met that special little boy and I was immediately smitten. Toy buying was going to be so much more fun now!
Companies do a lot of research on how to develop and make toys, and they especially love to produce and promote the watch me toys, like giggling Elmos, walking robots, and crying dolls. Those toys have a short life span. After a child interacts with it for a while, interest is lost, batteries die, and yard sale fodder is born. The best toys are the creative toys, toys that are limited only by a child’s imagination. My grandson loved such a toy, LEGOs, and he was so good at them. Our favorite task every holiday was to find a new LEGO set to challenge his skills.
The name Mason has an English origin meaning stone worker. A professional mason is a skilled tradesman who uses block, brick, or stone. Successful masons have exceptional problem-solving skills, a keenness for learning, and natural talents. Our Mason could take those simple blocks and allow his imagination to steer his hands, always understanding that everything he built needed a firm foundation. You don’t build using one small block for the foundation for it would eventually collapse. A solid, sizable base is essential.
What a great picture that is of what Jesus is teaching in his parable of the wise and foolish builders. A foolish builder doesn’t know how to begin, what to use as a foundation. He builds his house upon sand, and the house is bound to fall. The wise builder establishes a firm foundation, built upon a rock, and it will stand.
Jesus provides that firm foundation for us through His gift of salvation. Any life built upon any other foundation will not stand when the winds of adversity blow. My prayer for my gifted grandson is that he will build his life on the foundation set by the Solid Rock, the Master Builder, the Savior of the world, so that when the storms come into his life, he will stand!
I Corinthians 3:11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Lord, thank You for that foundation upon which my life is built, the foundation of Your sacrifice for me at Calvary.