A Reflection for a Christmas Weekday
Find today’s readings here.
If we are lucky enough to have children, we know the ferocity of a parent’s love. The moment of a child’s birth gives us an instant inkling of the love God has for us, we who are all God’s children. We parents who would do anything for our children, even sacrifice our own lives, appreciate anew what it means to be a child of this loving God. “See what love the Father has bestowed on us,” writes John in his first letter, “that we may be called the children of God.” God loves us absolutely and unconditionally.
As much as the image of God as a loving parent resonated with me when I became a parent, another miracle has given me fertile insight into God’s love: I’ve become a grandparent.
When you become a parent, you plunge into the depths of unconditional love. But sometimes you feel like you’re drowning, because parenthood comes with responsibility. You want to raise your kids right, so that they grow up to be loving and compassionate and generous and brave and peace-making and educated and productive. That’s some serious pressure on a busy and frazzled parent. You love your kids completely, but when you are in charge of everything to do with them, sometimes you lose the perspective of the big picture.
When you are a grandparent, though, that one generation of remove feels like holy ground. You are done raising the child who is now the parent responsible for this wondrous new life, this birth that reawakens your sense of awe. You love with such a peaceful tenderness that it can only be a reflection of God’s great heart. You love with such a humble awareness of the passage of time that it can only be a glimmer of God’s eternity. You love with such a surge of joy that it can only be a glimpse of God’s acceptance of each of us as exactly enough, just as we are. Surely God loves us like a grandparent loves a grandbaby. We can trust that we are precious in God’s sight.
Such sweet perception of God’s unending love allows us to recognize the presence of God dwelling in all of our brothers and sisters, so that we can’t help but offer our love and light to the ailing world. We can’t help but share God’s tender care with others. We can’t help but give our witness, so that the world will know us and our God, and maybe even want to know us better.
