Dear Rose Park,
Last Saturday, Sam and Winn went to a baby shower for my cousin Maggie in Richland, MI leaving me and Simon to hang out for most of the day. After Simon’s soccer game, he and I went out to lunch. Simon wanted to go to Burger King (not my ideal choice, but I let him choose anyways). Once we arrived home and cleaned out the car, Simon got a big smile on his face and said to me, “let’s play catch.”
Sometime during this summer Simon learned how to catch a football. Ever since, playing catch is all he wants to do. Sometimes it’s with a baseball and glove, but more often than not it’s one of a few footballs in our garage. Now that he’s started to pay more attention to the football games on television, he’s been asking me to play catch in the yard while pretending to be football players from the Lions, Chiefs, or Notre Dame. Though my shoulder is certainly getting sore from all the throwing, playing catch isn’t just about throwing a ball back and forth because while we’re playing we also talk.
Simon will tell me about his day at school or his friends while we’re playing. He’ll ask questions about everything and anything in between throws. We’ll laugh about something funny that happened yesterday and ultimately, we’ll soak up these father and son memories. It’s nothing fancy, in fact it’s quite ordinary, but playing catch is one of my favorite things to do.
In a way, I wonder if this is how our Heavenly Father feels when we talk to Him. You can see the excitement grow in Simon’s eyes when he catches two or three passes in a row; this joy seems to bubble up inside of him resulting in laughter, smiling, and (my personal favorite) the phrase ‘I love you Dad.’ As Simon’s father, my heart swells with love when he genuinely desires to be with me. I wonder if this is just a small sense of what God must experience when he deeply and genuinely desire to be in a relationship with Him.
The book of James reminds us, “draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” So, when we go to God in prayer to share our deepest needs, His heart must swell with love. When we invite God into every facet of our life, His heart must swell with love. When we seek His wisdom at every crossroad, His heart must swell with love. And when we run to God with hope in our eyes and joy in our heart to say, ‘let’s play catch,’ His heart must swell with love for His children.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Mark
Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash