His little fingers dripped with orange greasy pizza oil and stuck together with chocolate fudge-vanilla. I checked his face and found it wreathed with those same streaks of orange and black.
Quickly I stretched across the table, searching for a napkin to wipe his mess before it migrated to my jacket. But before I found them, little arms suddenly wrapped around me and squeezed tight. A blonde head rubbed face and nose into my neck and then unexpectedly settled hard against my chest.
Caught off guard, I looked up to see a man, about my age pushing his cart toward where we so sophisticatedly dined at the Sam’s Club table. I still harbored a hot dog held high in one hand and a napkin in the other.
My grandson’s sudden demonstration delighted me and brought quick tears to my eyes. Little greasy hands patted my navy jacket and hugged me tight like he’d never let go.
The old man’s face lit up at the scene of a little boy buried against his grandma, his smile wide with appreciation.
“It’s the best kind of love,” he said like one conspirator to another as he came alongside.
I nodded, overcome by the spontaneous lunch-smeared clutch of a five-year-old.
“It’s pretty special.”
“Yes it is, isn’t it?” He pushed his cart on after a pause and lingering gaze. A contented smile accompanied him to the door.
I sat, savoring the warm pressure of a little boy who just loved for no special reason, and hoped that the picture remained in the man’s day as it would in mine. A sweet visual of undeserved, unrestrained love.
It’s pretty special, isn’t it?
God’s love is the very foundation of Christian faith. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
When our daughter was ill I struggled with God’s love, as maybe you have in suffering. For how could His love mesh with what my eyes saw and how my heart felt? It warred with what lay in the hospital bed. It messed with what I knew to be true.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…”
At the cross I found God’s undeniable demonstration of undeserved Love. “...that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 ESV)
And there, at the reminder of the cross, I found it again and again.
“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 ESV)
There are times when we must firmly plant our faith in what we know to be true and not what we feel.
But there are other times, surprising tender reminders of God’s love, that break into our day and take our breath away. They surprise us in the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, or the melody of a song. They shock us by a kind word. Or they whisper love through the greasy hug of a child.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10 NIV)
If your struggle today chips away at the very foundation of your faith, if God’s love seems to fade against the backdrop of your experience, look to the cross. For God so loved.
I pray that in someway the man with the cart will make that connection. That the picture of a little boy and a grandma might remind him of the surprising undeserving love of God even in the messy stickiness of life.
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