Dave Edgren tells kids about his childhood tricks—jumping off his bike, baking mud cookies—to show how we deceive ourselves. God formed Adam from mud and breathed life into him. Jesus does the same when we fall into sin: he kneels beside us, forgives us, and breathes new spiritual life back in.
Chapters
Come on up to the front. We're gonna have a story. How many of you— I'll wait till the older ones get here so they can go, "Oh yeah, definitely I've done that." How many of you have ever tried to trick your brother or your sister? Have you ever tried to trick your sisters? Your sister? No? No? I was really big into tricking my brother and sister, particularly my sisters. My brother was a bit older than me, and he would always call me dumb names because he'd figure out my tricks. But my sisters were 5 years and 4 years younger than me, and so I could trick them pretty good because I was like 9, 8 years old. Old when these stories took place, and they were just like 4 and 5. And so one time they're out playing in the front of the yard, and we had a long gravel driveway. And so I got going really fast on my little bike that I had, and I jumped off the back. Many of you ever done that? If you get going fast enough on your pedal bike and you jump off the back, it just keeps going. And so I let it go, and they were— they were playing tee or whatever they were playing. The bike went in front of them all by itself, and I came running after it. Come back! Don't leave me! And they watched me run by, and they— I don't know if they believed it or not, but then I came over. Of course, the bike wobbled and fell over, and then I came over and told them, "Oh, the bike just was trying to get away from me, and he's always pulling tricks on me." And they said, "Wow, we didn't know it could go all by itself." Another time, it was a really hot day, which we know all about right now because it's been really hot, and we had a pond out the back of our house. And I went out there, I took one of Mom's special cooking trays, and I took it out to the mud, and I picked up some mud, and I made it back and forth in my hands like that until it was a little patty, and I put it on the cooking tray, and I pushed it down. Then I got another one, back and forth, till it was a little patty, and I pushed it, and I made all these little cookies or biscuits, and I put them on the tray. And then Mom wouldn't let me put it in the oven, because she always put her cookies in the oven, and that made them turn from just goo into yummy, yummy cookies. But I figured if I just leave them on the back step where the sun's shining, they'll get cooked, and then I'll have beautiful beautiful chocolate cookies. And so I cooked my cookies, and when they were really dry, I took one and I looked at it. It was hard to get them up without breaking them, but got them up, and I took a couple of them to my sisters, and I said, "I made you chocolate cookies." "Oh, thank you!" And then they looked and they said, "This is dirt." I said, "No, it's not. No, it's been cooked, and so once you cook it, it makes it taste really, really good. I mean, it was mud, but I cooked it, so it's really good now." And they said, "No, it isn't." So I had to prove it to them, so I had to trick myself. I had to bite my dirt cookie. And not only did I have to bite my dirt cookie, I had to pretend like it was really yummy. And so, mm, oh, that is so good. And then my sisters, they believed me, and so they took a little bite. No, it's not, Davey, you tricked us. Go away, go play. And so I went away. And you know, sometimes we fall down in the mud, we get all dirty, um, we might make a mistake, we might do something wrong, and we feel like life's a real mess. But you know what? God tells us— he gives us this picture of Jesus in the very beginning of the Bible where he goes to a muddy place and he kneels down and he starts picking up the mud and he forms it in his hands. And then he doesn't make cookies, he makes a man, he makes a whole body. And when he's done, he doesn't just leave it out there to bake in the sun and then say, okay, now it's done. He does something that only God can do. He leans over and he breathes his life into the mouth of the man, and the man goes, "Oh, hello." And the beginning of life for Adam. And then God did the same thing for Eve. And you know, every time we fall down and we do something wrong, Jesus says he does the same thing for us. He doesn't leave us down there just to soak in the mud. He actually kneels down next to us and he remakes us, and he says, "I'm always with you," and he creates us into what he He created Adam in his image, Eve in his image, and he created us in his image. And he gets down there and he makes us again, and then he breathes life into us again, and we are in his image, and we're ready to wake up and say, okay, I get another try. Thank you, Jesus, for salvation. And then he doesn't just leave us to roll like that bike, you know, and say, oh well, now that you're ready, just go, and you can just spin, your wheels can spin until you crash. He stays with us. He sends his Holy Spirit to stay and to ride on us. In our lives, to be in our hearts, and to care for us, and to make sure that as long as we ask his guidance, he will always keep us going down the right paths. So I know you like to trick your brothers and sisters just like I did, but God never tricks us. He promises to always be there for us and to always create us anew whenever we come to him and say, Lord, please forgive me. He does what he did for Adam and Eve. He makes us out of the the dirt that we're in, and he raises us, he resurrects us to a new life in him. Thank you for listening to my story, and may you have a wonderful New Year this year. See you later.
