I miss my morning SportsCenter.  It was the ritual at one time.  I would wake up, wipe the sleep from my eyes, brew a pot of coffee, and drink the first cup watching the previous days’ highlights.  Dan Patrick or John Anderson would crack jokes while bringing me up-to-date on my favorite sports show. 

I say I miss it because that is no longer the case.  Now anytime the television is on, Abram is clamoring for one of his movies or favorite cartoons.  In two and a half years, I have seen a lot of Disney.  I have got my fill of Nickelodeon.  I’ve watched every Pixar movie ever created. 

Abram’s absolute favorite show is a Nick Jr. program called Yo Gabba Gabba!  It includes the perfect formula of his favorite things: music, dancing, and monster-like creatures.  Every episode is filled with catchy songs, teaches you a couple of dances, and is themed with some sort of lesson.  The cast of characters (Muno, Plex, Toodee, Foofa, Brobee) sing and dance and teach you not to bite your friends.

As Abram and I watched an episode about building a clubhouse recently, I realized that Yo Gabba Gabba includes a good illustration of the Biblical God:

Creation
DJ Lance Rock is the host of the show and the interactions of the characters in the show is really the product of his own imagination.  God created us out of his own imagination (and in his own image). 

Revelation
DJ Lance Rock tells the characters how they should interact, treat each other, and live in community.  God cares enough about us to give us the standards by which we should live and share his love for others.

Free Will
Whether the characters listen to DJ Lance or not is ultimately up to them.  He tells them what they should do and let’s them make decisions.  God grants us free will to do as we please with the standard he’s given us. 

Wisdom
In each episode, viewers learn some sort of lesson from the characters who choose to obey DJ Lance and the consequences that come for those who don’t.  Likewise, the pages of the Bible are filled with lesson after lesson of the blessing that flows from living up to God’s standard and the consequence of choosing not to.

Relationship
DJ Lance is not content to watch the interactions of his creation, he intentionally interacts with them.  Similarly, God is not an uninvolved, distant, cosmic mystery.  The God of the Bible has revealed his character and will through the Bible.  He desperately seeks a personal relationship with EVERY one of the people he has created.

Maybe too many cartoons have made me delusional.  Maybe too much Bible study has caused me to see inferences that do not exist.  Either way, I am overjoyed to serve a God that seeks, cares, loves and ask us to in turn call him Daddy (Abba)!

Galatians 4:4-6
But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”

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