I still haven’t recovered from
something my 4-year-old grandson said to us a few weeks ago, and I probably
never will. His totally unsolicited
comment at the end of our Skype call melted Grandma and Grandpa’s hearts: “I love you, Grandma and Grandpa – so
much!” Please understand – this is a
child who relies on his Dad’s promptings to carry on our weekly electronic call
and rarely volunteers information. He is
often more interested in looking at his own image at the top of the screen than
talking to us! So his sweet words are
forever embedded in the thoughts and feelings of these long-distance
grandparents.
My grandson’s words have prompted
me to think about how precious our words of love are to our heavenly
Father. Our daily relationship with an
eternal God can sometimes seem very long-distance; and we often spend our
talking time with him busily telling him what we want or maybe sometimes
remembering to thank him for what he’s done.
We also spend a lot of time looking more at ourselves than at him. But he
longs to hear us tell him that we love him – “so much”!
Not because he sent his Son to die
for us; not because he answered our recent prayer the way we wanted him to; not
because things are going well in our lives right now; not because of all of our
blessings. While we should be thankful
for these things and express our thanks to God regularly, what he has done for us is not the reason we should love him.
We need to be full of love and
praise for God just because he is worthy of it, whether or not he ever does anything
specific for us. God’s perfect character
deserves all of our love and devotion – and he deserves to hear us express that
devotion to him regularly. While this
can take different forms (music, service, time spent in the Word, etc.),
perhaps the simplest and most heartfelt is just to simply say, “I love you – so
much.”
God created us in his image and for
relationship, and I believe his heart can be melted just like yours and
mine. It may be easier to tell our
family and friends that we love them, but no
one deserves our words of love more than our heavenly Father. I am reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3: “unless you change and become like little children. you will never
enter the kingdom of heaven”. Thank
you, grandson, for reminding me to be more like you. I love you, too – so much!
