Recently, our little 1 year old son, Jayden, has been obsessed about playing with keys and locks.  Yesterday, he grabbed my keys when we came home from the mall and began cruising around the house, jabbing and sticking my keys into anything that might resemble a door knob or lock.

He found a door and my wife held him up to door knob for him to try his luck with the keys.  However, Jayden had decided to use the wrong key for the lock, and he was crying because the lock did not fit the key.  He looked up at my wife with tears streaming down his face, asking for her to help him with the lock, but at the same time, refused to let go of the keys so that she could show him the right key for that door.  My wife couldn’t have done anything about the lock, if the key did not fit.  It was a conumdrum our little boy was stuck in with no resolution, unless he was willing to give up the keys and let us help him.

It made Winnie and I think about how this situation parallels our life circumstances and God sometimes.  We may be in the crux of a conflict, holding tightly onto a key that we think will solve the situation, when in reality, it is the wrong key to unlock the situation.  However, at the same time, we tearfully ask God to help us without relinquishing our thoughts, ideas, biases, opinions, and overall control of the whole situation.

The funny thing about the situation with my son was that he actually had the right key on that same key ring.  All my wife wanted to do for Jayden was to switch out the key that he was holding.