We were driving home from a short but sweet weekend away, the kind that included few firm plans and many serendipities: A little ice cream shop within walking distance of where we were staying. A small-town festival with ponies and pumpkin painting and chalk art and apple cider. A bike ride through crunchy leaves. A hiking trail that begged us to fill our pockets with acorns and walnuts and red-veined leaves. Sun-dappled mornings with pancakes and brothers reading books to each other in their pajamas.
On the way home, with my heart full, I asked my crew the usual debriefing questions: What was your favorite part of vacation? What memories did we make? And finally: What did you see on vacation that showed you about God?
***
We’d seen our share of beauty over the past three days. The place where we were staying looked directly over the Mississippi River, which was even more vast than we expected. The river attracted all manner of life: eagles and hawks, turtles and fish, not to mention sailboats and enormous barges. We saw maples and oaks in all their golden glory. We picnicked under October-blue skies filled with clouds (cumulus, according to our third-grade scholar, who had recently studied such things).
The rest of the travelers in our car answered the way you might expect, citing the beauty of the trees, the vastness of the river, the uniqueness of the animals. I figured my kindergartener would fall in step.
I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, his head tilted in thought. “You, Mom,” he said after a pause.
“What’s that, buddy?” I asked, sure I’d misunderstood him or he’d misunderstood the question. (Admittedly, it was rather existential for a five-year-old.)
“You showed me about God.”
My eyes brimmed behind my sunglasses, because I am all too aware of the times I fail to show what God is like. God is love, which means he’s unfailingly patient and kind. He never demands his own way. He isn’t irritable, and he doesn’t keep score.[1] Me . . . not so much. Especially when we’re trying to get out the door reasonably on time, fully clothed, and with the required accessories.
My love is a mere trickle next to the mighty river of God’s love. His love is without limits, without conditions, without a shoreline—ever-flowing, ever-regenerating, ever-pulsing toward the ocean. It’s a love that takes our breath away from where we sit on the porch, but it’s even wider and longer and higher and deeper than we can grasp from here.[2]
Thankfully, his love is also full of grace. Which means that on the days when we get a thing or two right, it’s because of him. And on the days when the waters around us are polluted by massive oil spills (sometimes of our own making), his love covers that too.
Mark Twain said, “One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it.” As we drove home, I put my hand on Daniel’s arm and breathed a silent blessing over our passengers, now napping at odd angles in the backseat.
Beloved sons, may you know this love of God that cannot be curbed or confined—this love that can’t be stopped by death or life, by angels or demons, by our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow, by any power in the sky above or in the earth below.[3] And when my love gets shallow or bottoms out, may you never forget his love—a love so deep you will never get to the bottom of it.
[1] 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
[2] Ephesians 3:18
[3] Romans 8:38-39