The Little Bear

If you lived through the nineties I’m sure you can remember Beanie Babies. A toy craze that turned into chaos and insanity as people fought to get them all. Bedroom shelves were lined with them, toy baskets over flowing, and people storming McDonalds to get the latest Teeny Beanie. Toys you were super careful with when you played with them, buying tag protectors so they wouldn’t get wrinkled because no matter what you NEVER wanted to take off the tag! (-:

Yesterday, Al and I were going to go to the Flea Markets and I invited Lindsey to join us. I really enjoyed bringing Girl along for she had eyes for different things than me and I discovered a whole other world of stuff I’d never noticed. She was especially taken with all the little stuffed animal bears. As I looked with her I wasn’t surprised at all the Beanie Babies we saw. I couldn’t help but think though, this once coveted and priceless toy, was now piled up in an old basket in the back corner of a sellers stall, being sold for less than it was originally worth. In one of these baskets Lindsey found a little brown bear names “Curly” (for those collectors who would remember him) Lindsey asked me if she could get him and I agreed. Having been born long after, the Beanie Babies craze had died out, Lindsey new nothing about this bears history, to her it was just a cute little bear. She cuddled him as we walked about the whole store; at one point informing me that the bear would cry is she didn’t take him home with her. (-: When we got to the counter to pay, Lindsey handed the lady the money to buy her toy and as soon as he came off the counter she asked me, “Would you take that tag off?” I willingly agreed, though something inside of me still felt a little funny ripping that little red heart out of his ear. (I had been brainwashed with the rest of us!) The clerk threw the tag away for us and Lindsey cuddled her new bear out of the store.

Unfortunately the world often treats people like Beanie Babies. Certain ones are the one that everyone has to have. Others were never very desirable in the first place or were the “easy” to get ones. But in the end your worth in this world is measured by what others can “get” out of you.

Most people didn’t collect Beanie Babies because they loved stuffed animals so much; they collected them because they wanted to get rich. So as soon as mass production dropped the value, no one wanted them anymore. Sadly this same thing has happened to people and it has destroyed their lives. But the truth is… our life’s worth is not decided by the moody scales of this world but by the unchanging love of our Creator. Lindsey didn’t need that tag on her bear. The value of that stuffed animal didn’t lie in that piece of cardboard this world had given it, it had priceless value because she loved him.

Everyone who is called by My name,
      Whom I have created for My glory;
      I have formed him, yes, I have made him.

Isaiah 43:7

Lindsey told me she smiled in this picture

becuase she was so excited about her bear.