seek
The thing about having kids is they constantly grow older. Mine are 7-months-old now. It’s pretty hard to believe that they’re so mature now, and polite. They’ve changed so much since the hospital. They couldn’t do anything back then. But now, since growing older, they’re doing things – mature baby things. Things like rolling over and not puking so much. They’re eating baby food with spoons, and they yell when they get mad now. They like to watch movies too, ones with classical music and random objects that move across the screen. They smile and laugh and scratch each other in the face. It’s adorable.
While all of this is undeniably cute, and endlessly entertaining, it doesn’t really compare to the new thing they’ve started recently. At some point in the last couple of weeks, they figured out who I am. They know me now – they know I’m their dad. They’ve always acted like they knew their mom, because of the whole pregnancy/stomach connection thing. But now they’re realizing that I’m more than just a random guy who wears the same shirt every day and occasionally yells at the TV. When I come home from work and greet them in my high pitched baby voice, they recognize me. They know my face and my voice. You can tell from their reaction. There’s this joy that fills them, joy that usually results in a giant smile and lots of unexplainable body movements. They kick their legs and arms and let out a tiny baby laugh. It kills me. It melts my heart like those ‘He went to Jared’ commercials.
I think the main reason they’re so happy to see me is they know I love them. And life is better when you’re loved.
To be honest, I’ve always struggled with the concept of God’s love. It’s just that there are times when it doesn’t really feel like that’s true. In fact, it feels just the opposite. It feels like He’s upset, and He has a right to be I’m sure. I’ve often thought that life would be a lot easier if God would show His face. Things would make more sense if He came home from work and bent down to see us. If He would just show His face, or look in our direction, maybe we could feel loved, maybe we could feel like He’s there.
But what I’m finding is, experiencing His love has nothing to do with the direction of His gaze, and everything to do with the direction of mine. The truth is, He’s never stopped looking at us or looking for us, hoping that we would glance in His direction. And the reason His eyes never leave us is because He knows that if we’d just look, our lives would never be the same. But we won’t turn our heads. We keep chasing our own directions.
The crazy thing is, all that stuff we’ve been searching for is in the other direction. All the peace, the joy, the contentment we’ve worked so hard to find is in His gaze. He’s the cure for all that ails us and He’s waiting for us. His eyes have never left us. All we have to do is look back, to seek Him out, to seek His face. Life is better when you’re loved.
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” Jeremiah 29:13
