Ben, our grandson, walks things. He walks a sled, pulling it behind him down the sidewalk. He pulls a wagon, one that his grandfather had. He pushes a tiny mower. He walks alongside the real mower (with the battery out). 

Often, he helps us, convinced that his activity helps. Sometimes it does, even if I have to clean up some of the coffee grounds. Often, he’s learning to be with.

These days, he walks a puppy. It’s cut from wood, covered with printed paper, with large plastic wheels on bent axles so it wobbles, with a click, with a short string lengthened with a brown shoe string. We have no idea which garage sale it came from three decades ago.

All the bentness and wornness and broken-ear-ness doesn’t matter to Ben. What matters is pulling it around the block in the company of one or the other or both grandparents.

Recently, he realized that the dog may need to relieve itself on a patch of grass growing in the middle of the sidewalk.

In talking about work earlier this week, I suggested that God cares less about jobs than people, and even less about where coffee makers go. I wonder if, maybe, a little, the work that we think is so important is as much real as Ben’s dog is a real dog.

We are serious about it. We devote time and energy to it. And all along, the most important thing is the person alongside, protecting, encouraging, listening, being present. This isn’t to say that Ben is wasting time, or that we are, with the little puppy. Quite the contrary. It’s useful time, learning time. Learning to walk, to stay on task, to care about the imaginary bladder of a wooden dog actually matters. Spreadsheets and lathes and well-chosen words matter. But not as much as the people who are helped and healed and loved.

This image of Ben isn’t the whole story, of course. But it is a bit of the story.