Things used to be easier...or did they?

Tonight I went to the beach with Esther and Micah. While the coals got hot enough to actually cook something, Esther and I went to play on the playground equipment. This playground had...oh, I don't know what it's officially called. But it's a little tower that you climb into via ladder, and then you get to sit in it. That's pretty much all you do. I remember they had one of these at a pizza place we used to go to called Major Magic's, and I always loved the feel of secrecy and safety (well, until other kids came).

After we ate, we ran down to the edge of the lake. As I walked back and forth, watching the high waves and feeling the wind and seeing the stars coming out, I remembered the many moonlit nights I spent wandering around my backyard, singing into the night.

I was thinking that it used to be easier, back in the days of pizza place towers and backyard wanderings, but that isn't really true. Everything that is past seems easier (and everything that will pass will seem easier) when seen from a future perspective.

Once when my little buddy Lucas was crying over not getting something he wanted (I think it was a tortilla chip), I told him that life just kept getting harder. Some of the post-college age people listening said I was depressing them. But here's what I meant....

"Every year you grow, you will find me bigger," Aslan tells Lucy in Prince Caspian. And every year I grow, I find last year's problems seem smaller...and I find my God is big enough to handle everything that comes my way.

Life is never completely easy. It never has been, it never will be.

But sometimes you'll have a chance to play games with the waves.