I had a humbling experience not too long ago.

I was at a carnival with a friend and her 2 or 3 year old niece. The little girl was given a bright balloon, which my friend convinced her to give to her mom for safekeeping.

While we were in line for a game, the little girl looked up to the sky, then suddenly became quite anxious. My friend and I looked up to see a bright balloon floating away. The little girl began to whine and squirm. My friend smiled and shook her head. “That’s not your balloon.” she told her niece. “Mama has your balloon.”

The little girl, however, wasn’t convinced. She was almost in tears at the thought of losing her balloon. She didn’t take her eyes off it floating away in the sky until we reached her mother.

“See?” my friend said. “Mama had your balloon. And look! She got you a bunch more!”

Not only was the little girl’s balloon still there, safe and sound, but it was now surrounded by four more balloons.

How many times do we panic as we watch something slip out of reach, even if it was really never ours to begin with? We hold tight to our idols; our shiny objects that we are sure belongs to us.

But in reality, nothing truly belongs to us. Everything belongs to God. The Lord gives and takes away because everything is His to give and take away. We try to keep things for ourselves, but we can never own them. We even do this with the people we love because we fail to accept the fact that people can’t belong to us. We need to realize every human being belongs to God. Digging our nails into someone out of fear of losing them only makes matters worse.

But even in our anxiety, how much more does God give us? When the little girl thought she had lost her precious balloon, she came to find that not only had she not lost it, but she had gained even more. God gives us more blessings than we could ever attain from going out and trying to get them ourselves. Sometimes when we’ve think we’ve lost what’s important to us, we sooner or later realize that it we didn’t truly lose anything, because it was either never really ours or because God had so much more to give us.

Verse to Think About:
Matthew 7:11
So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.