The Simple Words of a Child

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!