"Cast Thy Law Behind Their Backs"

Sometimes I think Emry is going to be a tomboy. She makes more noises than any little boy I have ever known, discovering some new noise nearly every week. And she throws everything. She’s been throwing things since the time she could grasp them in her hand and fling them. Although my dad would say she throws like a girl…

Emry has always thrown the toys she is done playing with off as far as she can toss them. If they don’t go far enough, she picks them up and throws them again. Lately, she’s been tossing then things she doesn’t want any longer behind her back. Don’t want the car that belongs to her dollhouse – toss it over her shoulder. Don’t want the hippo – toss it over her shoulder. And since she now spins around on her bottom, she soon comes across those toys again, gets tired of them once more and tosses them over her shoulder again. It’s rather funny to watch.

This week I was reading Nehemiah 9, one of those wonderful chapters in Scripture that reviews the history of Israel – all those great things God did for His people, followed by the way His people forgot His great deeds and brushed them aside like yesterday’s trash. Verse 26 struck me: “Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against Thee, and cast Thy law behind their backs, and slew Thy prophets which testified against them to turn them to Thee, and they wrought great provocations.”

The verse follows how God led them into the Promised Land, provided them with exceeding great abundance, and peace, and prosperity…and they took it all for granted. Not caring about what great things God had done, they took His law and “cast (it) behind their backs” – just like Emry does with the toy she no longer wants.

It was an insightful picture. For while I don’t literally throw things behind my back, I am guilty of taking the great things God does for me and tossing them behind me, ever focused on the mirages of things I don’t have but see dancing in front of me. “Out of sight, out of mind” is the attitude I have towards the tangible blessings God gives me while I covet what I imagine He ought to give me.

Naturally, Emry’s tossing of her toys has now progressed to tossing food she doesn’t want to eat off her tray and to the floor. She and I had to have a little talk about that yesterday. A talk she understood because Ed later caught her trying to toss her bottle out of her crib, but when she saw him watching, she stopped and gave him a guilty look. Because tossing away good things is not only a waste, it’s disrespectful and ungrateful. A lesson I would do well to learn also.