Take my Legos, take my toys

It was a moment that parents love to stumble upon, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.

When our boys were young, their job every Saturday morning was to clean their room upstairs.  It didn’t matter to us how long it took them, 10 minutes or 7 hours, they were free to do other things in the rest of the house once the room was cleaned.  But they were definitely not quick about getting it done.  I can’t recall a time when the job took them less than an hour.  They would clean, get distracted, play with their toys…and we didn’t mind, really.  The longer they took, the more peaceful our Saturday mornings downstairs tended to be.

They had a small CD player, and they loved having music going while they “cleaned” their room.  At this point in time, they were all into a Jeremy Camp album, called “Stay” – and they especially loved a song called “Take my life”.  It had a rock anthem beat and guitar riffs on the last word of each line – right up a little boy’s alley.  Here’s the chorus:

Take my life (riff)
take my mind (riff)
take my soul (riff)
take my will (riff)
As I am yours and I give it all to You!

They played this song all the time and always sang it at the top of their lungs.  On this particular Saturday, my parental timing was perfect.  I passed by the bottom of the stairs at just the right moment to hear our oldest son call out to his younger brother:

Hey, hey, wait…check this out:
Take my Legos,
take my toys,
mumble,
mumble,
As I am yours and I give it all to You!

You could hear the pride in his voice as he was coming up with his own lyrics to match the beat of the song they loved so much.  Taking all this in, I stifled a surprised chuckle – not wanting to ruin the adorableness of the moment – and quietly walked away before they realized I had overheard them.

Jeremy Camp’s song was based on Jesus’ answer to the question: Which command from the law did God consider to be the most important?  Here is what He replied:

Mark 12:30
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Jesus was pointing His audience back to one of the nation of Israel’s primary lessons about God. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means that you love Him with all your best, all of who you are.  Jesus’ Jewish audience would have picked up on the importance of the connection Jesus was making.  While I’m certain Jesus didn’t add any guitar riffs to the end of each line, the addition of them by Jeremy Camp certainly got the attention of my boys. 

Changing the lyrics to “Take my Legos, take my toys”, demonstrated that our oldest son got the point – that we offer our best, our all to God – and his favorite thing in the world at that point in his life was Legos.  He loved to spend hours creating, playing, and dreaming with his Lego builds.  For him to offer his Legos to God was a pretty real sacrifice, at his young age.

Do we pray similar prayers?  When was the last time you offered your house, your car, your career, or your favorite hobby/toy to God?  We can’t leave them off the list if we’re going to love the Lord your God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.  

Keep Pressing,
Ken