As a mother of a toddler I can't tell you how many times I've seen thomas the train episodes and had nothing but irritation fill my mind. You can be sure that I roll my eyes at every, "fizzling fireboxes!" or "bubbling boilers!" comment that one of the trains makes.

And any other mom out there that has a toddler, especially a little boy, may completely hate the following post. But I simply can't resist.

While watching Jax's favorite Thomas espisode, "Hero of the Rails" (for the 100x time) I noticed something. Its a phrase that every single train says countless times throughout each episode. 

"really useful"

Each of the trains main goal in life is to be a really useful engine. That's it. They just want to be really useful. They don't want to be famous, or special, or even dream of being something they are not. They just want to be really useful. 
And on this particular episode you find out that engines that are no longer useful get sent to the scrap yard. Sir Topham Hatt only has room for engines that can prove themselves really useful. 
And through the episodes you watch the engines get into trouble or learn lessons on character, honesty and pride…but at the end of the day their goal still has to be to remain really useful to Sir Topham Hatt, the railway owner/manager.

And not that we are little blue engines or that God is like a chubby man who wears a Top Hat every day of his life. But I think we could take a lesson from Thomas and his friends.

 I'll put this out there: 

What if, as christians, our only goal in life- on a daily basis- was to be REALLY USEFUL.

And it's not really even so much a "what if", we can see it here:

2 Timothy 2:21
Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.

If we can leave all the earthly things behind, we can be really useful. And we actually can see that he does send those that are not useful to the "scrap yard",

Revelation 3:16
So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

And another thing that I always laugh at, that Sir Topham Hatt says on the show is,  "You have caused confusion and delay" as he scolds one of the trains and their mistakes. 

But truthfully, in light of this whole analogy I've got going here, it makes sense.

See if you can go there with me?

Since we know that God's sole purpose is his glory and the expansion of his kingdom, though the gospel going out to all nations-

And if we've got to be "really useful" in order to fulfill Christ's orders-

then anytime we spend our lives on earthly ambitions, or get caught up in sin or even just think that our lives are somehow meant to be lived for us and our enjoyment,

we are not useful to Christ-

we are in fact creating confusion in non-believers and delay in the gospel going out to all nations.

Who knew I could get all that while watching a show with Jax. And maybe some of you are rolling your eyes at me now, thinking I just took a cartoon WAAAY too far. 

But the way I see it is, life is to short not to. If we're honest; everything points to humanities' need for God, and our need to live like Christ told us to. Even animated train shows. :)