The Philosopher's Toad

I've come across a fun metaphor in the book Frog and Toad Are Friends, in the story The Lost Button by Arnold Lobel. Lobel was deeep.

Frog and Toad enjoy a walk in a meadow, some woods, and along a river. Toad realizes he lost his jacket button, so they go looking for it -- back through the woods, the meadow, and the river. They find buttons everywhere, but none of them are the right one. 

The more wrong buttons they find, the more irritated Toad grows. In a fit of rage, he jumps up and down screaming, "The whole world is covered with buttons, and not one of them is mine!"

And that, my friends, is probably going to be my lifelong framework for recognizing coveting and discontent creeping into my heart. That's exactly how it manifests itself. 

• Singleness: "The whole world is covered in people, and not one of them is mine!" 
• Status symbols: "The whole world is covered in luxury items, and not one of them is mine!" 
• Illness: "The whole world is covered in healthy bodies, and not one of them is mine." 

Toad's erroneous thinking brought me a moment of clarity about my own.  

His mistakes?

• He focused on what he didn't have.
• He focused on everything wrong with the buttons he found.
• Finally, and perhaps worst of all, he framed his loss as an absolute.

His double absolutes, "the whole world" and "not one of them" reminded me of a verse that keeps crossing my path. The Apostle Paul presents a double absolute of a different breed in Ephesians 5:20, "...always giving thanks for all things..." (NASB).

My flesh: "Nooo. It's not that simple." 

Paul's ideal feels a little harsh. Rude even. We're either succeeding at giving thanks all the time for all the things, or we're falling short. It's probably a norm among us to give thanks too sporadically, and too selectively. But Paul never said to feel thankful. Giving thanks is something we can do whether we feel like it or not. He put no burden on us to feel a certain way, but he defines this an obligation to act out.  

Yes, giving thanks is hard.

• It's harder in heartbreak.
• It's harder in loss.
• It's harder when you're feeling Holy Ghost abased. 
• It's harder when everyone around you seems to be excelling and prospering like mad. 
• It's harder when all the world is covered in buttons, and not one of them is ours.

Our choices are similar to Toad's. When we're feeling the angst of what's missing in our life, we can stomp the ground, or we can look around at what we have and give thanks. 

• We can grieve and give thanks. 
• We can be heavy-hearted and give thanks. 
• We can be uncertain and give thanks. 
• We can give thanks for the unwanted buttons we found on a path we didn’t ask to be on in the first place.

Lobel tended to leave major elements of his stories unspoken. By the end of this one, Toad has grown an appreciation for the "wrong" buttons. He sews them onto his jacket as a gift for his friend Frog, who jumps for joy. It's almost like Toad realized how despite his frustration, the discoveries on their second trip around the meadow, the woods, and the river had lasting value after all. He seems to have found joy in the journey, and in generosity. 

Lobel also gave us these brilliant illustrations. 

Maybe the leaps I made here are a bit much, but I’m confident in this: for God's children, the worst difficulties of life aren’t absolutes. When our eyes open to the absolute goodness of what we've been given, and the absolute hope of what lies ahead, then we can experience a more absolute gratefulness, leading to a more absolute joy. 

Easy? No. But it's absolutely a walk worth taking.