Reasoning with a child

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
Recently I had a dialogue with a three-year-old boy before church. He was standing near the morning tea table, which had various plates of food people had brought to share after the service. He was holding a plastic cup, and looking at the contents of the table. I thought he must be wanting some more water, so I went over to help.
But of course, he didn’t want more water. He wanted one of those – either the biscuits or the cupcakes, I couldn’t tell which he was pointing at. So I tried to explain to him, ‘Not now, but do you want some more water?’ ‘Not now, the biscuits are for afterwards, you can have one later but not now.’ Eventually I just had to tell him ‘no’ and try to distract him with something else, like asking him to tell me all about the Mickey Mouse on his T-shirt.
This little interaction got me thinking about how God must feel with us sometimes. We can be so insistent about what we want, and think that it’s the best thing for us right now, or that right now is the most appropriate time for us to have it. But God may have other plans. Depending on our spiritual maturity, He might reason with us; but if we are spiritually immature, it could be that He just tells us ‘no’ for now.
One day, we won’t be looking at the spiritual life as a fuzzy image, but we’ll see everything clearly (1 Cor. 13:12). Then we’ll be able to see how God’s plan for us was perfect all along. But in the meantime, we have to trust Him that He knows what He is doing.