AN ADAGE A DAY â—½ ENCOURAGEMENT
Just a Minute
by Carole Gilbert
I love it when I’m with my grands and get to take them places. I’ve gotten to take them to sports practice, pick them up from school, and just cart them all around town. We’ve gone to Chuck E Cheese, jump houses, and restaurants like Olive Garden. I always keep three car seats side by side in my car unless it’s the older grands I have with me. And I love the singing, laughing, and conversations that take place!
When my son and daughter-in-law had their new baby recently, I took care of the other kids. We went to the hospital to see their new brother, out to eat, to birthday parties, and whatever was needed. The day I was leaving, I took the kids and met my son at the mechanic’s shop. He needed to put his car in for minor repairs and then we were going to go to McDonald’s for breakfast.
The kids and I pulled up and parked as my son drove into the shop out of sight. My young granddaughter started to become upset and was crying, “Daddy! Daddy!” I reassured her Daddy would be back to us in “just a minute,” and to keep watching the doors for him to come out.
I continued talking with her and her siblings trying to get her mind off of daddy when I heard one of my grandsons was counting; 1, 2, 3…11,12, 13…30, 31, 32…50, 51…
His older brother said to him, “That’s not funny.”
When he got to 60, he looked at me in the rear-view mirror and said, “No he’s not, Gma.”
I thought, “What?”
What was happening was that he counted the minute I had referred to and when his daddy wasn’t out in “just a minute,” he was playfully telling me so. I explained that it's just an old idiom and doesn’t always mean literally just one minute.
This came from my grandson who recently turned seven. He seems to be the one of my twelve that could be the philosopher of the family. He apparently likes to think. I remember the age of seven. It was one of my favorites. That was the year I started to branch out more as a kid and started thinking things through for myself.
Kids can think so literally, sometimes. This makes for a funny concept if we think about some of the phrases, statements, and sentences we use.
Just a minute and I’ll give you some examples.
Hit the hay.
Off the top of my head.
Snowed under.
The apple of my eye.
Under the weather.
Costs an arm and a leg.
Up in the air.
Break the ice.
Toot your own horn.
And one of my all-time favorites is, “Pulling your leg.”
Children are so fun and smart. They can teach us if we let them. But somewhere along the way we lose our childlike beliefs and behaviors. I wonder if we think like a child, literally, when it comes to God’s word. Should we? I believe we should. God meant His word to be taken like He stated it, not to be watered down or picked at. It’s up to us to hear and obey.
Matthew 18:2-3,
And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said,
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”