No, I was told, this isn't a game - he won't play with it - he is responsible for it - he has to care for it. The reasoning was hard to avoid. Here was a boy - perhaps more than anyone else in the class - who needed to learn responsibility. Was this the beginning of an important lesson for him? or was he just looking for a distraction?
We all have choices to make - some seem important to us now but are just a passing phase. Others are more fundamental and will continue to have a profound influence on our lives.
Education dominates our developing years. But as time goes on, education has to narrow down. It has to be more focused on what we are going to be. We have to learn more about less. (It has been said that we learn more and more about less and less until at last we know practically everything about almost nothing!)
And then, just when you have completed all the requirements for your chosen occupation, you have to get a job. That can be difficult these days. And you can find that you like the work, but relations with the boss and other workers are difficult.
Then along comes the big question of marriage. It is one thing to "fall in love" with someone, but is this person all that he/she seems to be? Will marriage be happy and fulfilling for a lifetime? It is a much bigger commitment of ourselves than the job we have worked hard to get. You may have a profession which you regard as your life's work - and a whole series of employers. In marriage you are committing yourself to a lifetime faithful relationship with one other person.
But the biggest choice of all is in our relation to God. This is the choice that will inform and undergird all the other choices we ever make. This is the choice that gives strength and purpose to all of our life. God has been reaching out to us in love since before we were born. He offers us forgiveness for all the wrong and rebellious things about us. He knows what he is taking on - and still loves us. That is why Jesus came. That is why he died on the cross. And on that cross he could say, "Father, forgive them - they don't know what they are doing!" A dying criminal said, "Remember me, Lord, when you come as king", and Jesus replied, "Today you will be with me in paradise!" Jesus the Son of God came alive on the third day. Death could not hold him. And now he is saying to us, "Listen! I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he will eat with me" (Rev. 3.20). Our biggest choice is to open the door and welcome him as our Saviour and Lord.
The Israelite people wanted a king. This was a big choice and today's Bible reading gives us their reasons.
"Look," they said to Samuel, "you are getting old and your sons don't follow your example. So then, appoint a king to rule over us, so that we will have a king, as other countries have" (v. 5).
It was a very practical request. Samuel, their prophet-judge couldn't be their leader for ever, and his two sons, Joel and Abijah, "did not follow their father's example; they were interested only in making money, so they accepted bribes and did not decide cases honestly" (v.3).
In Moses' instructions to the people - before they had possessed the land - there is a reference to a future king: "After you have taken possession of the land that the Lord your God is going to give you and have settled there, then you will decide you need a king like all the nations round you. Make sure that the man you choose to be king is the one whom the Lord has chosen" (Deut. 17.14,15).
About two hundred years later, the leaders of Israel simply desired what the Lord had foretold through his servant Moses, as a something that would take place in the future and for which he had even made provision.
A little further down in today's reading, we hear them repeating their request: "We want a king, so that we will be like other nations, with our own king to rule us and to lead us out to war and to fight our battles" (vv. 19,20).
Leadership and the organisation of society are important. There are many ways it can be done - but the desire to be like the other nations wasn't good. Our greatest need is for a leader under God, a leader who acknowledges God and submits to God.
Samuel was troubled by their request. Any leader who has given time and thought and effort in building up an organisation is concerned that there be the right leader to follow on. This isn't easy and some find it difficult to give up their leadership to someone else. But the Lord says to Samuel, "Listen to everything the people say to you. You are not the one they have rejected; I am the one they have rejected as their king. Ever since I brought them out of Egypt, they have turned away from me and worshipped other gods; and now they are doing to you what they have always done to me" (vv. 7-8).
Samuel warns them that a king will make heavy demands on them and on their children. In time, "you will complain bitterly because of your king, whom you yourselves chose, but the Lord will not listen to your complaints" (v. 18).
Our greatest need is to live under God. That continues to be the basic choice we need to make.
The people of that time were arguing that they would be better served by having a king than by continuing with a prophet-judge like Samuel. And the arguments continue in Australia as to whether we would be better served by being a republic with a President over us. But the arguments are irrelevant to our need for wise and godly leadership - our greatest need is to live under God.
At a missionary meeting on the island of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, an old man rose and said, "I have lived during the reigns of four kings. In the first we were continually at war, and a fearful season it was watching and hiding with fear. During the reign of the second we were overtaken with a severe famine, and all expected to perish; then we ate rats and grass and this wood and that wood. During the third we were conquered, and became the peck and prey of the two other settlements of the island; then if a man went to fish he rarely ever returned, or if a woman went far away to fetch food she was rarely ever seen again.
"But during the reign of this third king we were visited by another King, a great King, a good King, a peaceful King, a King of love, Jesus, the Lord from heaven. He has gained the victory. He has conquered our hearts; therefore we now have peace and plenty in this world, and hope soon to dwell with him in heaven."
We want a king to lead us. We want to be like everyone else. Yes, we do need good models and leaders. But, above everything else, we need God. We need to open the door of our lives to King Jesus, the Lord from heaven.
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