A Sandbox or Weedbox?

It was once the center of much activity, a meeting place for the neighborhood children. Sometimes they would gather to play in it, building houses, forts and roads for their cars and trucks. Other times they would just sit around it, sifting its contents through their hands or tossing a handful of it into someone’s hair. The greatest fun was when they would pull the garden hose over and fill it with water. Boy what a mess! What great fun.

Gradually, as the children grew older they went to it less and less. Eventually weeds began to grow in it, and it became an eyesore. One day the father ordered it “deweeded.” With trash bag in one hand, a shovel in the other, and a look on his face of “why me?” the oldest in the family, Brian, approached it and began pulling out the weeds. Working nearby, Brian yelled over to me, “Sure’s something, isn’t it, Mr. Mettey! Our sandbox has become a weedbox!” We laughed.

CONSIDER the sandbox and how no one played in it anymore. How, through lack of play, it had become a weedbox, and how this can happen to us. We grow up and life becomes so busy with serious matters that we do not take the time to play. We abandon the sandbox because as grownups we do not need it any longer. Yet deep down, the child within us still longs to play. Play gives to us the balance in life we need but so often sadly neglect or deny. The question I asked myself about life was simple yet revealing, “Have I allowed my sandbox, that place of joy and fun, to become overgrown with weeds?” How about you?

Rev. Wendell Mettey
Revised 8/2/2014

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