What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Imagine the following scene:
“Hey, Jimmy, guess what?”
“What?”
“Mommy and daddy are taking you to Disney World!”
“Oh, wow! Thank you so much! I can’t wait!”
“Well, you know Jimmy, it’s not so easy to get there.”
“Huh?”
“We have to pack all our suitcases. Crease all our clothes. Then we have to lug them to the airport.”
“And then we have to wait for the luggage when we get there and hope they didn’t lose it.”
“Yes. Then we have to go through security. That can take a half an hour.”
“We have to empty our pockets, take off our shoes. We can’t bring any liquids.”
“Really?”
“Yeh. And if you set off the alarm, they have to call special people to examine you. It’s a big hassle.”
“Not only that, when we get on the plane, there’s no guarantee we’ll be sitting together.”
“How come?”
“Well, sometimes the computer makes a mistake when you buy your tickets online the way daddy does. So we might wind up sitting a few rows apart.”
“By the way, honey, I hope I don’t get a middle seat again like the last time we flew.”
“My gosh, I remember you were surrounded by those two bruisers. I don’t know how you ever fit!”
“And don’t forget the lines at Disney. Remember the last time we were there when Jimmy was only two?”
“Oh man, was that a hassle.”
“Mom, dad, do we really have to go?”
“Don’t worry, Jimmy, it’s really not so bad.”
Could you imagine parents speaking to their children like that? Poor Jimmy. He’ll probably live in dread of that terrible day when he has to go to Disney!
There’s a saying in the Talmud:
“Man is led in the direction in which he desires to go.”
If we constantly look at the glass as half empty, our children will grow up looking at the world the same way.
If we wouldn’t talk about Disney’s World that way, why would we ever talk that way about God’s world?