isn't she precious!
kate and her cheerios. :)
luke telling me good morning.Kate, my niece, has just turned one. She is a doll. Just beautiful. At one point, my mom, had to go help Luke go to the potty (he went pee-pee by himself!), and so she scooted Kate's little high chair up to the computer and I watched her eat breakfast. She was shoveling in the cheerios and I was just beaming. I loved it. At one point, I waved at her and she totally waved back. Smart girl.
It was a weird type of foreshadowing that got me understanding where parents come from when they talk about just wanting to watch their kids sleep. I was so content in those moments just to be there with her, talk with her about whatever, and explain that we will meet one day and be good friends.
And then, of course, I parallel this with my relationship with God. If I am really honest with myself, I'm realizing how hard it is for me to just accept his love for me. I mean, I know it in my head, but I feel like in my journey, it has become commonplace. At the end of the day, I can look back and often feel that I have failed or fallen short. This is because I think God's love depends on what I do. My subconscious thoughts-- "I shared the gospel with someone today, therefore God is happy with me." HOW does this happen?! I so know it's not even close to true.
Also, for me lately, I have been thinking not so much on where the love is coming from(God), but more so the action of love. Of all the actions a holy and perfect God could demonstrate towards us, as He has perfect right to do anything, He chose love. Unchanging, never wavering, sees everything--even the deepest recesses of my heart and unbelief, His love continually pursues and I have never done anything even remotely close to deserving it.
I think I begin to see a glimpse of this when I see how I relate to my niece and nephew. In their short little lives, they have done nothing really but be born to warrant my love. And you know what? That is enough! Kate was just sitting there in front of me, doing nothing but being Kate and I LOVED it. And, all I wanted was for Luke to talk to me. I just want to hear his precious little voice. I don't care what he says. I think he ended up telling me about his burn on his arm or how he is using the potty or the fact that he's "phree"--3.
Sometimes I think I need to become a little more child-like in my fath-- just accepting and believing the fact that He has initiated and my life is to be lived in a response to that. J.I. Packer wrote this book called "Knowing God" that I've been reading recently. Here is a little excerpt I liked about being known and loved by God.
"Knowing God is a matter of grace. It is a relationship in which the initiative throughout is with God--as it must be, since God is so completely above us and we have so completely forfeited all claim on his favor by our sins.
We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us. Paul expresses this thought of the priority of grace in our knowledge of God when he writes to the Galatians, "Now that you know God--or rather are known by God". What comes to the surface in this qualifying clause is the apostle's sense that grace came first, and remains fundamental, in his readers' salvation. Their knowing God was the consequence of God's taking knowledge of them. They know him by faith because he first singled them out by grace.
The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God's initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving. That God is fully aware of us, "knowing us through and through" as we say, is certainly part of what is meant, as appears from the contrast between our imperfect knowledege of God and his perfect knowledge of us in 1 Cor. 12:32."
