Greed

So we left the pond at 4:00 so we could make it to the hot dog eating contest in the campground pavilion! William had signed up for the 13 & under contest. Now, my son can eat a lot - currently he can down 1/2 of a large pizza. However, he doesn't do so very quickly. So I thought this would be interesting. He got all kinds of advice from my boy cousins, again. It was fun!

They gave the kids EIGHT hot dogs and the first one to eat them all was the winner. Will didn't win, but he got FIVE of them down, which I thought was a decent showing for his first eating contest!

Here he is before the contest started.

This is after only ONE hot dog!

I wish I had a picture of how miserable he looked AFTER the contest was over. He didn't eat any supper and was pretty lethargic for a couple of hours! After a while he made a visit to the bathroom and then, Ahem, he was fine! :)

So last night, Will kept talking to me about his birthday, which is in a month and he's SO excited about all he's going to get for his birthday. I grew weary of this discussion and we had a little talk about greed. I told him that he was sounding pretty greedy in regards to his birthday and all the STUFF he hoped to receive. He didn't say much in response to my rebuke, so I wasn't sure if he "got it". So after he was supposed to be in bed, he comes downstairs with this list. On the top it says, "Things I Want" and lists 5 things. About half way down it says, "Things I Don't Want" and lists 8 things. So he's all proud of himself for having more "I don't wants" than "I do wants"! I sent him back to bed and said we'd talk in the morning. Well, this morning, he brings it up again and says, "aren't I grateful?" I said that I wasn't quite sure that was the definition of gratitude, but it was a start. He also added later that he'd like to send some of his toys to "poor kids" somewhere since he has a lot of toys. I said we'd work on it. . .

Then I got to thinking, that's kind of our attitude with the Lord sometimes, isn't it? Well, it is for me. I say things like, "I wish I didn't get these headaches so often, but thank you that I don't have cancer, or MS, or whatever." Or my favorite is, "Thank you for this wonderful, strong, working body you've given me, but couldn't you help me lose just a little weight so it would be a perfect body, you know, since You didn't make me taller than 5'2"?!" Now, don't misunderstand me. We're supposed to call out to God with our needs & desires, with the full knowledge that He knows what's best for us & we, therefore, need to submit to His will. But we also need to be careful that we aren't complaining, which is in effect rejecting the goodness He's given us. Why am I talking about this in the same post as the hot dog eating contest, you ask? I just thought that was a perfect example of greed - eating as much as possible in a short amount of time, then suffering the consequences later, except our consequences are often not fixed as easily as a trip to the bathroom! :)