It's been a while since I told a "Bella" story, but this one had to be told. Our granddaughter is 2 years and 9 months old this month. She talks a blue streak, as they say, and teaches me things every time I see her. Sometimes, the lessons are sobering, but this one was a real laugh - at least for a while.
She was spending time in the master bedroom with her Papaw yesterday. She knows if she goes back there she can usually get him to play one of the shows she likes on his television, even if her daddy is monopolizing the one in the living room.
Most of the programs she likes we can tolerate, but there are a few that are so silly or repetitive or boring that we groan as soon as she asks for them. One of those she used to call "Loopy" because she got confused about the character's real name. I'll leave it at that so I don't publicly criticize the show. I'm sure he's a perfectly lovely person, but the goofiness of the show grates on the nerves of all the adults in the house.
Anyway, yesterday she was sitting on the floor, watching one of her shows, when she suddenly said to her Papaw, "I like God. God loves me. God loves Loopy." How can you argue with that logic? So with a groan, he turned to that crazy show and she got to watch.
She did a lot of that this weekend. In fact, on the way to church this morning she asked if our pastor, Michael, would be at church. I told her he would and she said, "I like Michael. Michael loves me." I think she is beginning to connect that love goes both ways and that God's love encompasses all of us.
I laughed over the "God loves Loopy" comment until this afternoon it hit me that I was sometimes forgetting just how much God loves all of us and how we are commanded to love one another. I was venting on the telephone to an old friend of mine about a situation in my extended family and how a particular person has caused a great deal of resentment and alienation in a situation and I realized that I've spent more time talking about the pain she has caused than I have spent in praying for her and asking God to intervene in the situation. After all, if God loves Loopy, He surely loves her too. Who am I to vent instead of pray? Yes, she is in the wrong. Yes, sins have been committed, relationships harmed, lies have been told, but God loved me when I had the same list of strikes on my record.
I'm teaching this little girl many things as she grows, but thank God that He is using her to teach me too.
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