Metaphors and Other Beautiful Things

We've been talking about metaphors and allegories at our house.

It all started with The Polar Express. The movie is loaded with metaphor and once we started uncovering them the kids didn't want to stop. I knew things were getting crazy when Olivia informed me that there were metaphors about sin in a Robin Hood episode of Backyardigans.

But the coolest thing ever was when Olivia decided to make up her own allegory.

We live, as many of you know, in somewhat of a... ahem...ghetto. So as Aaron and I were casually commenting on some fresh graffiti, Olivia got to thinking.

Here is her allegory (I'm not kidding. She came up with this all by herself!):

There was a man who had a perfectly clean wall, and another man who decided to graffiti on it.

A policeman came to arrest him, and said, "I'm going to close my eyes and count to 100, and when the time is up you need to be finished cleaning off that wall or you're going to jail."

The criminal scrubbed and scrubbed, but nothing he could do would get that graffiti off the wall.

Then the policeman gave the criminal a helper. The helper didn't just paint over the wall. He tore the whole thing down and built a brand new, clean wall.

We are like the criminal and the graffiti is our sin. The policeman is God the Father, and the 100 seconds is the span of a lifetime. You only have a short time to make your peace with God, and then comes the judgment.

But we cannot save ourselves, just like the man could not remove the graffiti, and so God sends a Savior. Jesus does all the work, and He does it completely. He makes our peace with God.

Of course, it's not a perfect metaphor (none are), but it still sort of chokes me up a little. I love watching my children grow in grace!