My girlies love clothes. And you can imagine with four of them that we go through a lot. Their Nana loves to shop for them and also gets great hand-me-downs from a friend of hers who has a granddaughter just older than Hope. (how convenient!)

Last time we were at Nana’s house she gifted us with a huge bag of clothes! Which we couldn’t look through for several days! And the girls were going crazy! But I didn’t want to have a mess at an inopportune time! (and do they ever make a mess trying on all those clothes… but they have fun so it’s all good)

When the day finally came for us to go through the stuff, I gave the girls specific instructions: “Girls, I’m going to put the little girls down. Do not touch the bag until I come back out!”

When I returned to the living room, I was shocked and amused at what I found:

The girls had literally made a fence around the bag. “We put all the rocking chairs and ottomans around it so we would make sure we didn’t touch it, Mommy!”

I laughed so hard, took a picture, and thought, “I’ve got to write a post about that!”

Pardon a quick history lesson: Have you ever wondered where the Pharisees came from? They’re nowhere to be found in the Old Testament, and then they suddenly appear unintroduced and unexplained, playing a major role in the gospel narratives.

The Pharisees were the upholders of the law, the self-proclaimed keepers of the kingdom. In their zeal to keep the law and insure that the people of Israel would never again fall into polytheism, the Pharisees had built fences around the law in the form of new laws. These new laws were meant to keep people from disobeying the original laws. But then, those weren’t good enough, and more were put into place. Eventually, the Pharisees made their law-keeping a law unto itself. The purpose of the law in displaying God’s beautiful character was completely obstructed and opposed.

Paul has an awesome “rose garden” illustration about this, but you’ll have to ask him about that.

I cannot explain the depth of my amusement at the fact that my children made a literal fence around something they weren’t supposed to touch. Their childish version of Pharisaism didn’t bother me at all; but wow am I ever going to have an awesome example to use with them when they’re older!