Faith Like a Child – Nothing Beats a Box

We recently upgraded our upstairs bathroom at home with a new toilet, sink, and cabinets. We bought our house two years ago but had put off fixing the broken toilet and unusable sink because we had so many other projects to tackle. Suffice to say, it was time. Finally, after demo, cleaning, lifting, and some sweat and tears, it’s all ready!

While us adults are super excited to have a clean, more efficient, and fully-functional bathroom, our boys’ favorite part of the entire ordeal are the two large boxes the new installations arrived in. Forget the toilet and vanity, they only have eyes for cardboard. Our three-year old literally spent two entire days placing thousands of stickers on his huge box while our five-year old taught him how to make it into a “dragon cave.”

It’s amazing how a simple box can bring so much joy to children. Not only do they play with the cardboard for hours a day but they slept in them the other night (or attempted to at least). They are even scheming how they can keep the boxes forever. It’s easy to think kids need expensive toys or even an abundance of toys to be happy, but the truth is, often times all they need is a box.

For a child, there is

truly nothing that

beats a box.

I wonder if this is why Jesus said “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 28:3 NIV). There are many dimensions to what Jesus is saying here, but I think it’s helpful to understand it as an invitation to see the world through the eyes of a child again. Jesus is inviting us to experience God’s love and blessing by finding joy in the simplest of places and experiences.

As adults, we can easily lose something of the simple joys that we experienced as children. We get older, life gets busy, and we often end up complicating everything. We spend lots of time and effort trying to get all kinds of stuff that we think will make us happy. We fill our homes (and sometimes storage units) with tons of stuff. We work for it, maintain it, protect it, and fix it…which is exhausting. The thing is, I think contentment and joy are much closer than all that. We think we want the fancy toilet but all our soul really desires is the cardboard box.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t own any nice things. We personally go for better quality with the intention of it lasting a lifetime.

I think it’s more an invitation to open our eyes to the simple joys that exist in our lives that don’t really cost anything. In the smile of a loved one, the presence of a friend, a good book, a beautiful sunset, a game game night where we come together and make memories.