Put Your Socks On

 Devotion for the Week...

Between my own boys and the kids I've babysat, I've been living in toddler-land for almost 20 years now. This is reflected in the fact that Paul bought me a picture book called Princesses Versus Dinosaurs for Christmas this year. It's really cute and I'm looking forward to reading it with the littles next week 😊

In all these years in toddler-land, I've noticed that kids love to take off their socks and some of them dearly love to pull the socks off the other little feet around them, too. Putting those socks back on is a lot harder than getting them off, though! There are a lot of skills involved in holding the sock open, fitting the toes into the opening and then pulling the sock over the foot. That's without even bothering about whether the sock is the right side up!

By the time kids are three and four, I'm trying to get them to dress themselves as much as possible, so they learn to put their own socks on and then eventually they can also put on their own snowpants, coat, hat and boots. Often they still need help zipping their coat and getting their mittens on, but at least it's not all my job anymore, which is great when I'm trying to get four of them ready for a walk. More than once I've taken a kid for a walk with their snowpants on backwards, but they don't care. They're just so proud of themselves for getting them on they don't even notice the zipper is going up the back instead of the front.

Learning to dress yourself is a process and it takes a long time for it to become so easy we can do it without even thinking about it. The same is true when it comes to dressing our character. "Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony" (Colossians 3:12-14).

I find it interesting that Paul says to clothe ourselves with these traits, as if they are separate from us and we need to pull them on like a pair of socks. Mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness and love don't always come automatically to us in every situation. Our automatic response might be anger and harsh words, but God wants us to cover that response with the mercy and grace that come from Him.

Like the toddlers who struggle with their socks and their snowpants, we will struggle with the traits Paul listed. We will be impatient with our kids or our coworkers. We will need help to forgive people who have offended us. It might be frustrating at times when we feel like we got one sock on, so to speak, only to be unable to get the other one over our toes. We might be trying our best, but still get the snowpants on backwards. Certainly it will be slower than we would like. Gradually, though, with sufficient practice and a reliance on God's direction, we will get better.

I don't know if we'll ever be able to put on all of those traits all the time without even thinking about it, short of heaven, at least. It's something to aim for, though, isn't it?