“Love One Another . . . As I have loved you.”   Jesus of Nazareth

“Grandchildren fill a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.”

What is love?  It’s an age-old question addressed in prose and poems, songs and scriptures.  How would you define love?  How would you describe love in human terms? What experiences from your own life would you use to illustrate it?

Maybe if you’ve had a good marriage you’d use the love of two spouses.  St. Paul said, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.”  To be sure I’ve seen that kind of love, especially with those who’ve been married for decades.  But far too often that kind of love falls far short, as is witnessed by sky-high divorce rates.  But even for couples who stay together, too often theirs is an arrangement of toleration rather than loving adoration.

Maybe you’d think of the love of a parent for a child.  I think that’s a bit closer—at least in the cases of parents who genuinely care for their kids.  In his baptism Jesus is referred to as the “Beloved Son.”  But still, the parent/child relation is one that is fraught with failure on many levels.  Yeah, I think it far too often it misses the mark of Godly love.

The illustration from life that I believe comes closest is the love that is shared between a grandparent and grandchild.  I came to that conclusion this week while spending time with my three grandchildren.

The youngest is only nine months old, which requires a lot of time spent on the floor with her.  As I was crawling around with her it came to me, “This is what God does with us.”  God comes to us on our level.  That is the point of the birth of Jesus; God coming to us like we are, and where we are at.

For many, maybe not all grandparents, the love for a grandchild is one of pure adoration.  They are the most beautiful, talented, intelligent, creatures ever to grace the face of the earth.  A grandchild can do no wrong—at least most of the time.  And if they do, the grandparent disciplines very, very, gently and lovingly, just like God does with us.

A grandparent has little or no expectations, just like God.  What can a person expect from a child?  Very little or nothing.  A grandparent accepts their grandchild wherever they are at in their life.  How silly would it be to expect an infant to be able to behave in a manner that is beyond their cognitive or physical ability!?!  The same holds true for us.  Our loving God doesn’t expect us to be and do something or someone that is beyond us.  That gives us the freedom to stop trying. 

Spending time with grandchildren requires a great deal of attentiveness and care.  It’s such a joy to be able to feed, clothe, bathe, and protect the little ones.  Again, that MUST be how God interacts with us, not only providing for what we need in our lives, but comforting and coddling in the process.

When spending time with grandchildren it’s so easy to be fully present and live in the moment.  Nothing else matters.  Nothing else is more important.  That is how we are meant to be with God, and God with us.  All God desires is to be with us, and for us to be with him.

And the way grandchildren experience us is also illustrative of God.  You know, our grandkids don’t care how we look, what we’re wearing, what we’ve accomplished in life, how much money we have, what kind of car we drive, how big and beautiful our house is, or even how we smell (at least most of the time).  They accept us as we are.  And that is exactly what God does with us; loves and accepts us as we are.

Grandchildren are also very genuine.  They simply are themselves.  They haven’t been taught yet how they should “be”, so they simply are themselves—at least for a time.  That is the freedom that we have been given as children—or grandchildren—of God.  To be our genuine selves.  God doesn’t want us to be anyone else.

I could continue with this, but you get the point.  And besides, I hear my grandchildren waking up, so I have to stop.  They’ve spent the weekend with me.  It’s the next best thing to being in heaven.