From the mouths of babes…..
Last weekend, I was driving back from the bottle depot with my two eldest grandchildren. We have this convenient little arrangement. When the recycling containers are running over in my garage, I load everything up, pick up the kids, and off we go to the bottle depot. Their job is to do all the sorting, put the cans and bottles on the carts, and take them up to the counter. For their effort, they get to keep the money (with the encouragement of course to save up for something worthwhile.)
After the bottle depot it is lunch at A&W (which of course Grandpa pays for, because after all, the kids have been encouraged to save their money). But I digress. On the way home, my eight year old grand daughter pipes up and asks, “Grandpa, what are your five favorite words?” “My five favorite words?”, I said to myself, “I have never thought of that question.” So typical to my male temperament I blurted out things like “food”, “snowboarding”, “diving”, “Pam”. (That is my wife’s name, and fortunately with her in the vehicle I remembered to throw that one in.) I really can’t remember what else I said, but then I asked her the same question.
The first two words out of her mouth were “love” and “Jesus”. You know the “L” that you hold up to your forehead that signifies “loser!?” That was me. I immediately felt foolish and very humbled. Foolish because I had taken her question so lightly, and humbled at the fact that an eight-year-old has the ability to recognize something so profound. She gets it. Love and Jesus are where it’s at.
I was reminded of the words of Jesus when he said that unless we become like little children, we can’t see the Kingdom of God. And I said a quick prayer to my Heavenly Father that He would give me that simple faith and insight of an eight year old. “Lord, I get so caught up in the business and busyness of running this organization. Help me to remember that the most important things are love and Jesus. I want them to be my favorite words too.”
-Randy Benson