As a young mom, clutter was always a battle. The Second Law of Thermodynamics – that all closed systems tend to drift toward a state of disorder – played out daily in my home! (I’m married to an engineer, can you tell?) I cleaned up the house and my four little ones and their mass of toys would bring disorder sweeping in right behind me.

One of the biggest culprits of this toy mess, and my biggest love-hate relationship was with Legos! I loved the creativity they generated in my kids, but hated the chaos on the floor of their room, particularly when I had to walk through there. Barefoot. In the dark! Ouch!

Each morning the Lego bin was dumped. In every spare moment – before school, after school, all day on holidays and weekends – cities and machines, craft and people of all sorts were meticulously assembled by my little horde of creators. Over the course of the day there were frequent requests of “Mom, come look at this one!” After supper was prime Lego play time, no school and often Dad would join in the fun. There were pirates and natives of tropical islands, British soldiers and space explorers and of course every conceivable building, device, or mode of transportation these Lego people might need. As you might imagine, when bath and bedtime approached it was war. “No! Don’t make me put them up!” “Whyyyy? I just got finished building it!” Sound familiar?

After too many bedtime showdowns, I realized something had to change. I’d been going to bed every night wound up from dealing with the kids. As the saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” so I came up with a solution.

Now, I’m not a “perfect house” kind of gal; I want our family to be able to actually live in, play in, and enjoy our home. My goal for picking up the toys was a safety issue. If the kids got sick in the middle of the night, or if there was a fire or other emergency, the children needed to be able to safely walk out of the room and their dad and I be able to safely walk in without crippling ourselves or falling over toys. It dawned on me that all we needed was a safe path through our personal Legoland.

The next night I introduced new procedures to the kids. They could henceforth leave the creations they had built spread out all over their room as long as there was a cleared path between their bed and the door. They readily agreed. That first night I helped clean up in order to show them what I considered a decent “clear path.” After that it was smooth sailing. Each night 10 minutes before bath time “Clear a path to your bed!” would ring out from Mom or Dad, baths would proceed without frustrated gripes (at least the gripes about having to pick up toys), and bedtime became peaceful.

So what does all this have to do with anything spiritual? I think it gives us a glimpse of the love of the Father.

As I saw my children, made in the image of Creator God, creating their Lego landscape, I saw sheer joy and love. Joy in creating them. Uniquely. Joy in talking with them. Joy in planning the whole script of their Lego lives and moving them from here to there. Joy in giving them new homes and cars and hats. Joy in being with them first thing the next morning and spending the day with them. Joy in protecting them from the crawling baby brother. Joy in preserving them from mom who would require destroying (putting up) things each night. They loved the creative process, loved what they made, loved interacting with it, and loved showing it off to others.

Just think about the loving care that went in to creating everything we know. Creator God spent thought and energy and love and passion preparing this world we take for granted. What must have gone into his ideas for making the earth a ball and dangling it in space with beautiful heavenly bodies and spinning it and making it of dirt and rocks and water and air? What creative joy did He get out of making volcanos, clouds, hurricanes, and caves? Did He do all those majestic things just because one day He would delight in our joy and awe of seeing and experiencing these amazing sights? What about the variety of plants? Couldn’t he just as easily have made one kind of plant to cover the whole earth that fed us all, created all the oxygen, and did everything else He wanted plants to do? And the animals? Again, huge variety. Did He make slugs sticky so little kids would say “Ew!”? Did he make rugged elephants to reveal His strength, downy chicks to show His gentleness, peacocks to reveal His beauty, marsupials to remind us He takes care of us when we’re helpless? And did He make giraffes just so one day in 2017 He could watch us with joy all come together online to wait on the birth of a giraffe for weeks? On and on I could go. But the question is still Why?