Today we visited Baby’s-R-Us once more, and at Briana’s urging finally picked out a crib and dresser and ordered them;  very nice, dark cherry wood, and we’ll have them within 7-14 days.  Bri insisted we order them early due to the fear that they wouldn’t be in stock or available soon.  I told her they would surely be available immediately and sure enough they were.  I was right! (I get to be right once every 7-14 days….)  I’m glad we ordered them though…every little purchase like this, every preparation, makes it all the more real.  Here are some pics of the purchases…

Now we have to get the room ready and paint it (I’ll be doing that to prevent pregnant-paint-mommy-syndrome…very scary).  The crib is convertible, meaning it will be able to become a regular bed once that day comes.  Because of this, we also had to order the rails for it as well as a guardrail, because if we wait it might be out of stock by then.

I completely remember having a guardrail as a kid.  My dad made me one.  I was terrified of falling out of bed at night. One time, in the middle of the night, I somehow fell off and got all wrapped up in my sheets, and was left screaming for help from the floor of my room.  Luckily my pops saved me from under the covers.  Phew.  Remembering that guardrail had me thinking of a common Christian misconception though.

A lot of the time people on the outside of Christianity look at things like God’s precepts/commands as rules and regulations that those inside must “follow” in order to be seen as righteous in God’s eyes.  They don’t realize that God’s commands and precepts are truly just like guardrails on a bed.  They’re there for a purpose, and the purpose is not to make people jump through hoops, but to protect us.  Christ alone is our righteousness, not our obedience to rules.

God gives us his word and the wisdom and truth within it as a “guardrail” for our lives.  He knows the things that will make us fall out of our beds and get twisted up in the sheets that would destroy us.  It may seem like a silly metaphor but it’s an appropriate one.  God knows what’s ultimately best for us, and a Christian’s obedience is a reflection of their faith in Christ and comes through an understanding of God’s ultimate control and sovereignty.  That his “guardrails,” his Biblical precepts and commands, keep us from self-destructive lives in which we fail to glorify Him.  What’s amazing is that those times we still manage to jump over them and fall out of bed (which I all too often do), He’s there to comfort us and rescue us in the middle of the night, just like my Father did when I was a little dude…twisted up in my dinosaur sheets.