A Child

10.5.12

A few days ago, I was in a meeting when a young man with his small child came in the room. The little girl had her head buried in her father’s shoulder. The man explained that his daughter would not let him leave his house without her because she hated to be apart from him. She was around one-year-old and had curly brown hair and big brown eyes. All the women in the room tried to get her attention, but she was more than content with her daddy.

At, first she was too shy to even accept the snack offered to her, but after a half hour of being fed by her father, she gingerly reached out and grabbed a pretzel offered in her direction. By the time an hour had gone by, she had enough courage to leave her father’s lap and wander a few feet in either direction. When anyone reached for her, she ran back to her father’s arms.

She discovered a few toys, one of them being a set of glasses. One by one she picked up a glass, her father would take it, put it back on the table and she would find another. When the cups bore her, she went after the bowl of apples. She bit one then tried to grab another one, leaving the first with her father. He took the bowl of apples away and offered her the first one, but she wanted a new one.

Once he removed the bowl of apples from her sight, he tried to distract her with a pen and paper. She was content to draw for a few minutes then decided to dump out the bag of pens. When the bag was empty, she went back to the glass cups. Her father tried to clean up the pens while taking the glasses before she could break them. As if he wasn’t paying her enough attention, she started laughing hysterically. She didn’t care that everyone else was laughing at her, she watched her father, who smiled down at her.

“Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” - Matthew 7:9-11

Somewhere along the way, trying to grow up and be a mature Christian, I lost the meaning of having a Father who loves to give good gifts. I tried to be wise and think right thoughts. I tried to work through my emotions while not letting them control me. I could talk myself out of depression and preached to my soul about trust and surrender. I had to be a big girl, give up the whining and crying. I looked up at God and said, “See what a big girl I am? I’ve finally learned how to do it right.”

But, what if that’s not maturity at all? What if my quest for doing things right led me down a trail of doing things on my own? What if God didn’t want all my best efforts and wise choices? What if He wanted me to snuggle into His shoulder? Thankfully, my Father never runs out of patience. He didn’t give up or let me go in my own direction. He gently tugged me back toward Him. He threw things in my path that all my knowledge and my spiritual muscles couldn’t handle. He made the load so big, I finally looked up. And there was my Father waiting, waiting to hear me pour out my heart, waiting to let me fall on His chest, waiting for me to let Him share in my smiles.

He doesn’t want me to prove that I’m a big girl. He doesn’t need fancy works to make Him proud. He is already proud of me; He wants to share in my joy and pain. He could never love me more than He already does. He wants me to let Him be my strength. I don’t think maturity is like having big spiritual muscles. I think maturity is knowing how much of a child I am and having quick reflexes to fall in His arms.