June 05, 2004

A Father's Arms

Aidan has survived his second (at least) near-death experience. The first was when an angry rhinoceros charged at his door of our car during a visit to West Midlands Safari Park. It swerved at the last nanosecond. Methinks it saw an menacing angel to which we were not privy.

Yesterday, Aidie was being silly on the stairs. I think I have mentioned before that he learned to work our triple-action stair gates rated to 3 years well before he was 2. Then they took a siginificant amount of time for him to manipulate. Now they don't take him any longer than they take us open. He was most of the way down the stairs when I stopped him and sent him back up. I can't remember why he wasn't allowed downstairs at that particular juncture, but that was the situation.

He decided he would go up the stairs backwards. He was advised against this strongly. Or to put it more accurately he was ordered in no uncertain terms to go up the stairs properly. He chose, however, to do it his way. Fortunately, I was coming up the stairs to address his non-compliance. As he reached the top, he didn't take into account the stair gate across the bottom of the landing, slipped, and like the walls of Jericho, he came a tumblin' down. I don't mean sliding down on his bum. I mean completely out of control like a rag doll.

Had I not been inside the bottom steel-framed stair gate, it would have stopped his fall. Instead, he slid into my arms head-first and I scooped him up to safety.

It was just one of those parenting moments when the shadow and the type - the temporal world and our human family relationships - makes more obvious the reality of God's relationship to his children. How often are we silly and do things our own way and think we'd made it to the top, just to come tumblin' down? And how often is God standing there to scoop us up just before we break our neck?

I know this isn't a deep theological insight. It wasn't something I (or you) didn't know already. Yet God reminds us over and over of the simple things - the basics. He must do this because we need it.

Posted by david at June 5, 2004 08:48 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Basil's new obsession (literally) is to pull himself up with any structure in his vicinity (couch, coffee table, chairs, daddy's leg, etc). Needless to say he has entered the stage of stunt baby and upon reading this account, i am thankful we do not have stairs.

Posted by: aaron at June 8, 2004 06:58 PM

It worked!!! Huzzah!!!

Posted by: aaron at June 8, 2004 06:59 PM

Yes, it worked, but only because I was willing to delete 12 spam comments today and rebuild the site twice!

I remember the stunt baby stage with Aidan. I'm glad we lived in a ground floor flat at the time.

Enjoy these days.

Posted by: Dave at June 8, 2004 10:38 PM