I was 5 years old when the World’s Fair came to Queens, New York, just across the East River from my Bronx hometown. I remember going with my family to the Fair and gazing in awe at the Unisphere, the 12-story-tall steel globe that still stands in Flushing Park. I clearly recall the thrill of watching lights play on the dozens of fountains surrounding the sphere, and the reluctance with which I allowed myself to be led away when parental patience grew thin.

I also have a vivid memory of a “space age” exhibit of telephones that were equipped with recording devices. Visitors to the Fair were encouraged to speak into the phones and then listen to the playback of their recorded voices. Even I, aided by gentle prompting from my mother and some impatient pokes from my older brother, managed to haltingly parrot a few lines of poetry into one of the futuristic phones. The lines, written by Hilaire Belloc, were from a poem that I knew and loved, even if I was too young to recite it.

When Jesus Christ was four years old,
The angels brought Him toys of gold,
Which no man ever had bought or sold.
And yet with these He would not play.
He made Him small fowl out of clay,
And blessed them till they flew away.
‘Tu creasti, Domine.’
Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise,
Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes,
And bring my soul to Paradise.

I liked listening to the recording of my lispy narration, especially the “toys of gold” part. I may have been just a little kid, but I knew that “toys of gold” were something rare and precious, and that if I had some, I’d play with them all the time.

It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I discovered that kids don’t always want to play with toys, no matter what those toys are made of or how much they cost. Sometimes, kids prefer to play with random objects. In our family, the most random of those objects was Gus the Spud.

Gus was a potato encased in a knee-high sock tied shut with a length of yarn. The whole contrivance was something I’d put together to help teach the kids basic physics, but when the lesson was done, Gus and his trappings found new life as a plaything. Gus the Spud was at various times a lasso, a whip, and a windmill. Meanwhile, high-grade toys languished nearby, unnoticed and unused.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m all for imaginative play. If a wool-wrapped root vegetable was my kids’ idea of the perfect toy, I was okay with it. But I can’t say that I wasn’t a little put out by my children’s preference for Gus to the toys that, in the days before online shopping, I’d sacrificed time and effort to secure, let alone pay for.

Sometimes I wonder if God himself isn’t a little put out by his own children’s preferences. When we adults have free time, we tend to squander it on what the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper called “hectic amusements” that make us feel simultaneously wired and tired. Too often, the restorative diversions found in lake and sky and field are passed over in favor of such pastimes, and toys of gold are cast aside for the common.

The kind of “play” God intends for us is the kind for which he created the sabbath. It provides us not only with rest and refreshment, but with space for contemplation on his goodness.

You might say that everything else is just small potatoes.