I Get No Love From a Fire Truck Eraser

While eating my lunch of leftover pork today, my spunky and often mischievous two-year-old daughter Kate found someplace a little red eraser in the shape of a fire truck.  She held it in front of her face and announced, "dis no love you," which is Kate-speak for "This doesn't love you."  I wasn't overly surprised by this, never having expected to receive much in the way of affection from an eraser, fire-truck-shaped or otherwise, so I gave a distracted "mmm hmm" affirmation and went on with my pork meat.  When Kate repeated that "dis no love you," I asked for some verification: "that eraser doesn't love me?"  Her response: "No.  Dis no love you.  I love you."  My heart melted.  

This little dialogue reminded me of how frequently we forget the sources from which we can expect love.  The reason this matters, of course, is that we should invest our time and energy, our efforts and our abilities, in those areas where we can be assured of a return on investment.  A great many people, when asked, will tell you that God, family, and friends are some of the most important things in their lives.  But then we sometimes dedicate our best selves not to God and the people who care about us, but to things of secondary or tertiary importance: work, sports, hobbies, accomplishments, honors, the list could go on forever.  We would be well advised to remember that as important and enjoyable as those things can be, we're not going to get any more love from them than I could count on from the fire-truck eraser that Kate found under the kitchen table.  I may love golf, for example, but it doesn't love me back, and I probably ought to spend more of my time on things that do.  (Clarification: I couldn't hit a golf ball to save my life).   God and my neighbor by right have the greatest claims on my life; I want to make sure I don't neglect them for something that will, in the end, leave me empty.