Puppetry

Was thinking about how amazing it is that we are the sons and daughters of God, and what that means, exactly.  To be the adopted children of the divine.  It seems (at least to me), easy to acknowledge God as our creator.  And to assume that creator is somehow the equivalent of "Father", but that's not entirely true.  Father is much MORE than creator, because it implies a likeness of being, of substance.  Creators create out of any substance.  A Father creates out of His own.  Take, for example,  Gepetto, the toymaker who constructed Pinocchio out of his skill, and desire to have a son.   But as a puppet, whose every movement was controlled by the puppetmaster, Pinocchio was not a SON.  He was a CREATION.  Gepetto loved Pinnochio, but he wanted him to LOVE HIM BACK.  And to do that, he had to "cut the strings", so to speak.  Pinnochio had to have a free will - to be able to move and decide and speak for himself.  Otherwise he was just a creation, who could never choose to love a Father. 
Once "string-free", Pinnochio's job was to become "a real boy", because it was only then - once he was no longer a puppet made of wood, but a boy of flesh and blood - that he would TRULY and fully become Gepetto's son. I feel like during our sojourn on earth, we are all "stringless wooden puppets".  So, how did we, lifeless wooden puppets, become animated?  Through the sacrifice of God's true and only Son.  His death gave us the opportunity for life.  In Pinocchio, it was a Blue Fairy.  On Earth, no one less than God's only Son would suffice.   As such, we are allowed to make mistakes, and follow our paths, because our Master desires us to love Him back, and to become truly His REAL children. But He does not want puppets.  He wants children.  And like Pinochio, we mess up a whole lot, and are easily led down the wrong paths. 

 The little "cricket" on our shoulder does not always speak loudly enough for us to heed it's good advice.  Gepetto searched and searched for Pinochio when he was led astray, just as our Father searches relentlessly for us, calling us ever home to Him.   At the end of our journey, though, it's God's plan that we become truly sons and daughters of Him - to become "REAL" boys, as it were - of the same substance as the Father, of the same flesh and blood, fully real, fully able to love Him back as He loves us.  That is the gift He gives to us - the gift of Himself, of being forever a part of His family, of His divinity.  Not just figuratively.  Literally.  And THAT is awe-inspiring.

Letter of Augustine to the Catechumen Honoratus  AD 412

"This is the grace of the New Testament, which lay hidden in the Old, though there was no end of its being prophesied and foretold in veild figures so that the soul might recognize its God and, by God's grace, be reborn to Him.  This is truly a spiritual birth, and therefore it is not of blood nor of the will of the man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.  This is called adoption.  For we were something before we became sons of God, and we received benefit by wich we became what we were not.  One who is adopted is not yet, before he is adopted, the son of him by whom he is adopted; nevertheless, he is at that prior time one who can be adopted.  And from this begetting by grace we distinguish that Son, who, when He was Son of God, came that He might become the son of man; and He thereby enabled us, who were sons of man, to become sons of God."