Encouraging His heart

Much living happens down below in the valley and in the daily struggle to ascend to the heights.  There’s little glamor there, one knows, in the sweat and toil, in sun’s glare and moon’s soft glow.  Day comes, night falls, one after another.  Week follows week and month follows month, and every day one cooks and cleans and sweeps and tidies and mothers and prays and works, carrying out seemingly insignificant tasks with an occasional glance upward to that far-off peak.

It was in the carrying out of a common household chore that the whisper came.  “Walk with Me.”

“Yes, Lord,” I answered, wiping around the coffee pot and in front of the fruit bowl.  “I will walk.”

Then this, “You encourage Me.”  What?  I do?  The Son of God – encouraged?  By me?

Ah, but wasn’t He fully man and fully God?  Hadn’t He walked this very earth, too?  Hadn’t the man, Jesus, been hungry and thirsty, hot and cold, feverish and energetic, just like us?  Hadn’t He lived in the lowly, human things?  Sanded a board?  Hammered a nail?

Hadn’t He loved and laughed, gone on walks and enjoyed picnics with friends?  And hadn’t He known the sting of rejection, the slashing pain of the hatred of others?

Yes.  He had.  In His humanity, He, too, had wanted love and acceptance.  And being God, He’d longed to be trusted and believed.  Had longed for each one to be adopted into His Father’s family.  For each soul to come, to abide in Him, The Vine.  He’d longed for – us.

Just as the eager love and childlike trust of my sons gladdens my heart, so my trust, love, and faithfulness in the mean and common duties of an ordinary life bring happiness to the Heavenly Father.  As I delight in them and their simple presence, so He delights in me – in us.

Today, let’s walk with Him, shall we, abiding in Him, following Him so closely that we keep bumping into His back.  It will gladden His heart.

It’s Multitude Monday.  Once more, we count, knowing that the counting, too, pleases Him and gladdens His heart.  Thanking Him for:
– a half-hour with a boy, a bar, and a comic book at the coffee shop
– a free mocha for doing an interview
– wonderful pictures of Boy Three, who actually smiled (a miracle, right there)
– a phone call from “Grandma Lee,” an older lady who’s “adopted” us
– a very long phone conversation with my childhood best friend and first cousin
– watching Boy Two perform as Mendel in Fiddler on the Roof this weekend – three times!
– having family and friends come, too
– time to read and drink coffee on a lazy Saturday morning
– and many more!