Its intricate gears and inner workings made beautifully smooth movements; the care and attention to detail of the body and facial features made it seem almost alive.
There was only one person he wanted to give this wonderful gift to…the one he built it for. His beloved young son would get so much enjoyment out of his masterpiece!
He carefully handed it to the boy, explaining all the details and how the gears worked together to move the various parts. He asked his son to take very good care of this precious gift, but to also thoroughly enjoy it.
He only made one request in the care of this toy. There was a tiny screw under his left arm that was used to calibrate the movement of all the gears. He asked his son to never touch this screw, but to come find his father if any adjustments were ever needed; for only the master toymaker knew how best to adjust and calibrate his creation.
His son was thrilled with his incredible gift! However, after the boy enjoyed the soldier for some time, he began thinking of things he would have done differently than his father, had he created it.
He finally decided to make some minor adjustments (improvements really). He thought perhaps a small tweak of the calibration screw must surely make the soldier’s movements even more lifelike. It was such a small screw; it can't be that hard to adjust. Sure, his father was very adamant about not touching it, but what harm could one minor adjustment do?
He slowly lifted the soldiers arm, placed a small screwdriver in the slot of the screw head, and gently twisted. Unexpectedly, the entire soldier shuddered violently and fell into pieces! Both arms, both legs, and the head fell clean off! What the boy didn’t realize was that single screw was the key, interconnecting all the gears and internal workings of the soldier!
The boy was frightened - what would his father say? He quickly hid himself in his room, and set to work reattaching the arms, legs, and head back into their respective places. After many long hours, he thought he made it look almost as good as new.
However, when he tried to wind his soldier, he quickly realized it did not work nearly as smooth as it had before. In fact, it was now actually working much worse!
From that day forward, as the boy would try to play with his toy soldier, he became frustrated by the jerky movements of the once smooth gears. No matter how many attempts he made at adjustments, he could never get the soldier to work smoothly and wonderfully, like it had when his father presented it to him.
He did not ask for his father’s help for two reasons: the boy was ashamed to admit what he had done, and he didn’t really believe his father could do anything to make it better, anyway.
The toy soldier continued to get worse, until it could barely move at all. Soon the day came, as the soldier turned its head with slow, jerky, ugly movements, the boy became really upset. He became angry with his father. Why did he have to give him this stupid toy? If his father really loved him, he would have given him something better that didn’t break so easily!
Soon after, the boy even began to speak poorly of his father to others; many people wondered why such a nice boy’s father would give him a toy that did not work correctly. People began to assume the father must not really love the boy very much, to do such a thing. Soon the whole town became upset at the man, for his uncaring ways and shoddy workmanship. The town discussed whether such a man should even be allowed to have a wonderful son like this, or even if he really was the boy's father at all!
Nobody bothered to consider the father's side of the story.
………..
Now, how could this happen? Why would the son blame the father for what he himself had done?
………..
This is a parable of the world we live in. The Master Toymaker is God - our Father in Heaven. He gave us a beautiful and good world, and asked us to care for it. He also blessed us with the gift of freewill, so we could feel real emotions, and have the freedom to choose our own way. If we did not have freewill, we could not choose to do the wrong thing, but we would also never have the opportunity to truly love, or to truly be loved – or to truly love Him. God knew that love without choice is not real love, it is just mindless obedience.
Our Father did not want us to be like the toy soldier, who had no choice but to live with the decisions of its master. To give us choice to do what is right and good, he must also give us the choice to do what is wrong and bad, or we really have no choice at all.
There was only one thing He asked us not to do. He did not want His children to eat from the Tree of Life. He does not want us to eat from it now, either. For us, the Tree of Life symbolizes choosing to live our own life our way, without God; instead of following what God wants for us and knows is best.
And we continue to choose our own way instead of taking the better path He has laid out for us. We, through our own freewill, decided not to follow His advice – to shun His love. In doing this, we have broken (and continue to make worse) ourselves, and the world he gave us.
When things go wrong - weather destroys, people rampage, diseases kill – do we blame the Maker, instead the ones who broke the good gifts He gave? Bad things happen to people on this earth because we took a perfect world with no crime, no disease, no death…and we broke it. Broken things do not work the way they were originally designed and created.