I love my oldest grandson to death (I don’t know where this saying came from but it just came to my mind so I’m using it).  He loves sports and especially football.  He plays football when he is watching it on TV.  When he sees the lineman get down in their three point stance, he does the same.  When he sees a running back take the ball and a run thru the line he does the same. He eats,  dreams and thinks of football.  Victoria, his mom, says she’s never going to let him play football, but time will tell on that edict.  Anyway back to my story.

He comes into the house and says that he has a football game with the Patriots and the Broncos and he’s on the Bronco team.  Or he will say that his Dolphins just beat the Steelers. He has a vivid imagination.  Kids do that.  They tell you things that are not true. The dilemma is what to challenge and what to let go.  You don’t want your child or grandchild to lie, but you don’t want to kill their imagination.

My grandson and his vivid imagination came to my mind when I was reading in the bible of another person who told big stories and had a vivid imagination.  It took place in the wilderness after the Lord had directed the nation of Israel by the hands of Moses and Aaron out of Egypt.  They had come thru the Red Sea and caused the Egyptian army to drown and Israel to be saved on the other side.  God wanted the nation to follow certain rules and guidelines so he called Moses up to the top of the mountain to get instructions.  He directed the people to stay in camp while Moses was gone.

The problem arose when the people begin to imagine that Moses wasn’t coming back, so they went to Aaron to erect a god that they could worship, because the God that brought them out of slavery was no where to be seen.  Aaron asked for all their jewelry.  “He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.””‭‭Exodus‬ 32:4  You can read the rest of the passage, but God recognized what they were doing and sent Moses down the mountain to see for himself what had happened.  Moses said to Aaron,  “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!””‭‭Exodus‬ ‭32:21-24‬ ‭

Did you pick up on the last statement of Aaron?  “. . .I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”  That is a vivid imagination.  I’ve thrown stuff into a fire, and nothing resembling  a calf came out.  In fact, nothing of what I threw in the fire survived.  The jewelers would be ecstatic if they threw gold into the fire and out came a ring, a bracelet, earrings, chains.

What I see God wanted Aaron to come to grips with was what really happened.  He blew it.  He didn’t want some fabricated story ,but the truth.  In relationships, when one of our loved ones makes a mistake, don’t you want the truth rather than some big story that you nor anyone else believes.  Moses for sure didn’t believe what Aaron was saying and neither does God.

On this journey there will be times when we make mistakes by doing something wrong or saying something wrong or having attitudes that are unhealthy.  The best road to take is to admit our mistakes rather than complicating the situation by telling big stories.