If I had a green nose...

Got to love those moments when you're reading a kids story, and suddenly God speaks to you loud and clear. I'm not a Max Lucado fan, but his allegories for kids are just awesome....

Lucia and Punchinello looked out the windows of Eli's workshop. Like other Wemmicks, they were wooden people. But unlike other Wemmicks, they weren't standing in line in the village below.

"Look at them all!"exclaimed Punchinello.

"I don't understand it," Lucia wondered. "Why would anyone want to paint his nose green?"

"Because everyone else is, " Eli responded without looking up form his workbench.

Punchinello didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"Everyone wants to look like everyone else. Sometimes it's square hats. Sometimes it's tall shoes. Why, last year the big thing was yellow ears. Now it's green noses. Everyone wants a green nose."

"Does a green nose make them smarter?"Punchinello asked

"No."

"Does a green nose make them stronger?

"No."

"Does it make them faster?

"No."

"Then what does a green nose make them?"

Eli looked up and smiled. "Greener."

But his smile left as he looked out of the window at the long line of Wemmicks. "They think they'll be happier if they look like everyone else. But I made them different on purpose. Freckles, long noses, bright eyes, dark eyes...these were my ideas. Now they all want to look the same."

and then these two Wemmicks go down to the village to get a closer look, and this is one of the conversations they have whilst observing the goings on...

"It's the latest thing," barked a Wemmick on the sidewalk. "Don't be the only Wemmick with a plain nose."

"Who is that?" asked Punchinello.

Lucia shrugged. "I don't know."

"Why, that's Mr. Willy Withit," volunteered a Wemmick from behind them.

"Does he run the nose-painting store?" asked Punchinello.

"More than that," the Wemmick explained. "Painted noses were his idea. So were the square hats and the tall shoes and the yellow ears. New things are his thing. He decides what is 'withit'. Isn't he the best?"

Lucia and Punchinello took a good look at this tall Wemmick with the deep voice, big smile, tall hat, and green bow tie that matched his oh-so-great green nose. Both were thinking the same question. Lucia asked it, "Who made him the new-thing picker?"

The Wemmick looked puzzled, like he'd never been asked that question. "Well I don't know. He always has."

Little Punchinello and some of his friends end up getting their noses painted, but they have to keep going back as green soon isn't the latest fashion, it's blue. Then yellow, orange  - you get the idea. At the end of the story they return, somewhat dejected to Eli's workshop...

"Been trying to fit in, eh?'

Punchinello nodded.

"Did you succeed?"

"Not really. Every time we got close, someone changed the rules."

"That's the way it is."

"And my neck hurt from sticking my nose in the air," Woody added.

"You weren't built to walk that way."

"We just want to be ourselves again, " Spilnt said.

"I'm glad to hear that".

"Can we?"they asked.

"Of course you can," Eli replied. "I'll always help you to be who I made you to be". Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of sandpaper. "But it's going to take some time."

And so Punchinello and his friends followed their maker into this workshop where he spent the rest of hsi day removingf the paint. It hurt to be sanded, but it was worth it be normal again.