I adore my son. I just thought you should know that. The last 16 years have been such a blessing on my life. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
He is kind and compassionate. He loves to read and will literally spend hours discussing the latest books we’ve read. (I often read books at his request so we can discuss the characters and the plot, etc. That has become our thing). He shares my faith and enjoys serving along side me in the church. I mean, how many teenage boys do that???
He’s also lazy, obsessed with World of Warcraft, and has that fabulous <insert rolling eyes here> male trait of not seeing anything that is out of place… We butt heads as often as we share hugs.
In other words, my son is not perfect even though I tell people he is.
Yet still, I adore him.
He came over to me after choir practice the other day and offered to put my choir folder away. One of my friends standing nearby saw the look on my face and asked me rather facetiously, “you don’t love him at all, do you?” I laughed and said, “Nope, I adore him!”
The thing is, I loved my son while I was still carrying him in my belly and then I didn’t know what I was getting! After all, he was the one God had chosen to be mine. He’s part of me. He’s part of his dad. He’s just too much like his Oma sometimes… LOL!
I see me in him every single day. The joke is that he inherited all my bad stuff. My sarcasm. My tendency to pick and tease. My temper. Someone laughingly asked me the other day how I could live with him everyday after he had just given her lip. I laughed back and asked, “Where do you think he got it from???” He gets as good as he gives, that’s for sure.
What’s my point of this story? In Matthew 7 Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock.
7 “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. (NLT)
But then he goes on to say something to put this into perspective:
9 “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? 10 Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! 11 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him. (NLT)
Jesus said, you people are sinful and yet you know how to give good gifts to your children. If you know, HOW MUCH MORE do I know? Or, If you sinful parents love your children, HOW MUCH MORE do I love you?
Genesis tells us that we were made in God’s image. Just as I look at my son and see me, God looks at me and sees himself.
There are a lot of things about God that made much more sense after I became a mom. This is one of them. I didn’t really understand God’s unconditional love for me, until I had experienced a similar kind of unconditional love for my own son.
My son has no trouble believing that I love him. So why do I question whether or not God loves me? Now I know that many of us, myself included, did not have perfect parents. My parents divorced when I was in the 5th grade and my biological father was never really around after that. He abandoned us. My birth father was not the image of God that God wants fathers to be. But our God is not a sinful, selfish, silly person. He is the perfect and perfectly loving God.
Will we trust today in the gift of love he has given us? Will we believe him when he says, I made you in my image and I love you? Will we believe him when he says, if you know how to give good gifts to your children HOW MUCH MORE will I give you good gifts?
The best and most costly gift he every offered us was that of his love and he offers that freely to each and every one of us. Will you believe in God’s love for you? Because he most definitely believes in you!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and tease my son… 🙂