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My baby girl, all of four years old, looked up at me with a tear-streaked face and whispered, “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

How can you look at a sweet face and get angry? When I took time to look at both my girls’ faces, I never could get deeply angry with them. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh was not foremost in my thoughts, but how precious were these two gifts from God. How wonderful and marvelous that God trusted me with them, to nurture them and raise them in Him. Besides, they were so cute.

We had a sunken den, which is one of the most dangerous inventions of house-building mankind. Most people tripped going from the den into the kitchen or the kitchen to the den, no matter how many times we would warn them the step was there. And there Amanda was, sprawled out on the step with her little knee skinned and a cut on her hand from the ceramic bowl my Mom had made me for my birthday. It was one in a set of four and the last of the ceramics she’d made. (There is still a rooster in the store room ready for the past 30 some years to be glazed and fired.) Manda knew how important that bowl was to me because we’d had a discussion about her using it for her chili that night. She so much wanted to put away her plastic baby dishes and be a big girl, eating from bowls just like the rest of us.

Now, as I looked at that precious face, my heart just melted. She held her tiny palm to her chest, and tried to ignore the pain of the cut. To her, the more important thing was she had broken Mommy’s bowl.

I scooped her up and hugged her tightly, wiping her tears and kissing her little hand. Tears stream down my cheeks right now just thinking about it. How trusting God is to put a tiny life under my authority. I could have yelled and screamed putting the bowl above my daughter in importance. Praise God, I did not. Of course, there were times when I did yell and scream. This time, though, I am so thankful that I let her know she was much more important than any old bowl.

If I can be this way with my daughter, how much more God is to His children. How much He desires to scoop us up and let us know how very important we are to Him. How precious we are to Him. So much so, that He paid a huge price for us. With my daughter in my arms, I could not possibly contemplate giving her up to die for anyone else. Today, I still shudder as that thought squeezes my heart. Yet, God did…Love so amazing and so divine that without His help humans do not understand it.

Ponder this stark contrast.

1 Kings 3:26 The real mother, her heart full of love for her son, said to the king, "Please, Your Majesty, don't kill the child! Give it to her!" But the other woman said, "Don't give it to either of us; go on and cut it in two."

The real mother pleading for life for her son, and where there is life there is hope. The other mother, neither loving nor caring, only concerned about herself, called for death to the infant. God in His infinite wisdom and justice decreed eternal life from the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son to those whosoever believe on Him.

This is why I am thankful.

I could name hundreds of things that God has given me, but there is nothing so precious as the gift of His Son.

Father, I lift up my thanksgiving to You, with lifted hands and open heart, I pour myself out as a living sacrifice. I pray that You will give a beautiful holy day to all Your children. In Jesus name, Amen.

"Voice of Inspiration" from Andy Castro

Pretzel Love-Psalms 91:14