Attitude Adjustment
“Here you go, son. Here [are] the fries you wanted.” The father handed his son a [super-sized] container of french fries and a coke. He sat across the table from his son to sip his coffee and read his newspaper.
His son was becoming quite the young man. It seems like just yesterday that they brought him home from the hospital wrapped in a baby blanket his grandmother knitted. Now he is taller than his mother and is showing traces of peach fuzz on his chin.
Turning to the Sport’s section, the smell of the fresh french fries distracted him. He reached across the table to take a couple. “No Dad,” the boy snapped, “these are my fries, you can’t have any.”
“How dare he?!” The father thought. “This boy needs an attitude adjustment. Doesn’t he know where these fries came from? Why, if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have any fries at all. For that matter, he wouldn’t have a roof over his head, clothes on his back or anything to eat.”
Disgusted, the father’s thoughts careened out of control. “You know what I should do? I should go back to the counter and order 20 packs of fries and eat every one of them in front of you.” “If I wanted to,” the father reasoned, “I could take his fries away and throw them in the trash, and I’d be justified in doing so, after all, his attitude stinks and I am his father.”
As the mental storm subsided, the father identified the source of his irritation. The issue wasn’t whether he got a french fry or not. If he really wanted some fries, he could get his own; he didn’t need his son’s potatoes. What bothered him was the ungrateful attitude his son demonstrates by not willingly sharing with him.
I wonder how God feels when we are unwilling to share?
Wilson, Jim L. Fresh Start Devotionals. Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009. Print.
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