An encounter with a little girl in a supermarket impacted my life today. What was an innocent, innocuous and chance encounter turned out to change the outlook of my whole day.
Here is the story.
I went to a local Giant grocery food store yesterday to pick-up a few items. Upon arriving at the checkout area my attention was immediately drawn to the adjacent lane. It was there that I noticed a bright, metallic gold helium balloon hovering in lower orbit. The balloon was held by a very cute dark-haired little girl with oriental features perhaps 5 years old.
Nothing strange about a girl holding a balloon probably assembled by someone working in the floral department.
Then the little girl then said these words:
“Look Daddy!”
“Look at my balloon”
The girl’s words then focused my attention towards her father standing at the scanner station. Nothing strange about that either except what was an apparent nationality mismatch between the father and the little girl. Her striking Asian features were in stark contrast with the softened features of her American-born father.
The little girl was obviously an adopted child.
Adoption – a mental spark was quickly processed and briefly sustained. The thought, glossed over by other things swirling through my mind, was then callously discarded. And as this happenstance encounter with a child’s balloon effortlessly filtered into my mind, it effortlessly vanished.
Until this morning.
Look Daddy!
I have purposed in the past several months to devote a special block of time on Saturday morning for prayer. The last several Saturday mornings I have driven to my church and have prayed alone in the sanctuary for an hour or so with God. However, the Lord did something special today.
After praying for about 30 minutes my thoughts were turned to the incident at the grocery store yesterday. And I found myself repeating the following words over and over again while walking through the sanctuary:
“Look Daddy”, “Look Daddy”, “Look Daddy”, “Look Daddy”, “Look at my balloon”, “Look Daddy”, over and over again while tears flowed down my face.
The Lord impressed heavily upon me today that I am also like that little girl in the store. I to am an adopted child.
I was also without a “real Father” once lost in my iniquity and sin. The first Adam blew it. But, thanks be to God the last Adam Jesus Christ has given me new life and is now my “real Father”. We who are believers in Jesus Christ are now adopted as the children of God:
While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them. John 12:36
Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. I Thessalonians 5:5
A Change of Heart
Jesus got angry about several things while he walked on Earth and one of those he revealed to me recently through his Word and was solidified with my experience at the grocery store:
Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. Mark 16:14
Today in prayer the Lord upbraided me for the callousness of my heart. What I should have felt and been touched by yesterday took almost 24 hours to sink in. And the Lord was quick to point it out.
And like the little girl in the store, sometimes I don’t look like my “real Father”. The surface features of my heart are quite often in sharp contrast to those of His. His heart is always compassionate, merciful, tender and vulnerable. Mine often the opposite; cold, callous, unyielding and merciless.
My Father’s distinctive, heavenly voice speaks with clarity, truth, honesty and grace.
My voice often reveals itself with the local, vocal inflections and accent of a country foreign to His. My voice sometimes produces the sound of what the Apostle Paul coined as “sounding brass” and “tinkling cymbals” – pride, arrogance, timidity, fear, doubt and uncertainty.
We Have Hope
Today I learned that I am adopted, an adopted child of God. And with that I have hope. With the innocent and hopeful voice of the little dark-haired girl, I too can look to my Father and cry:
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Romans 8:15
The word “Abba” Paul used here in the Book of Romans is taken from the Aramaic language and can be translated into English as “Daddy”. So, in essence Paul is saying:
” … we cry, Daddy, Father”
And so we too can stand wherever we are (even in grocery stores), look up to our Heavenly Father and cry:
“Look Daddy!, Look Daddy!, ……. Look!” and He will hear us. For we are his adopted child.
May You Be Blessed
Messes To Masterpieces 