"Do you play or just work?"

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I can still remember when our older daughter was a preschooler. She had a lot of her toys scattered on the floor. I asked her to please pick them up.

“I don’t want to, Daddy,” she said. “I’m too tired.”

I looked at her with my “You don’t really expect me to believe that” look. And she looked back at me with her “Please fall for that line” look.

So I said, “Well, you will pick up your toys, but what if we play a game first?”

“O-kay,” she said.

“What about ‘Ride the horsey?’” I asked. That was her favorite game with me at the time, you know, the one where you put the child on your leg and “Ride the horsey down to town, better watch out cuz you might fall down” and then lower the child to floor.

She climbed up in my lap and rode the horsey a couple of times. Then I said, “Now clean up your toys and we’ll ride the horsey one more time.”

She put her toys away in about 90 seconds. And she wasn’t too tired to ride the horsey again, either.

Today when you face something you’d rather not do, take a couple of minutes and play, then do the work. God didn’t create you for all work and no play.

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