Special

“Papa?”

“Yes Emma.” 

She sits on a kitchen chair, her legs dangle off one side as she leans sideways into the back of the chair.  Her face is turned toward me, as I stand in the kitchen by the island counter where she and I have just finished kneading bread dough.  Her eyes are narrowed, and therefore hooded in such a way as to make them look sad to me.  It is her serious look.  “Yes Emma.”

“Are you going back to Jerusalem?”

“Yes Emma.”

“When are you going back to Jerusalem?”

“Soon honey.”

“Why Papa?  Why are you going back to Jerusalem?”

This question comes up in her every time it comes time for us to return to Jerusalem.  I made the mistake once of telling her that we were going because God wanted us to.  This triggered her first crisis of faith, as she had to deal with the Christian fiction that God is like Santa, all furry and nice.  Santa wouldn’t ask her Papa and Nana to go somewhere far from her.  Then she liked Santa better than God, and who could blame her for that, right? 

This time, having learned my lesson, I didn’t answer her question, but rather, asked her one of my own.  “Why do you think Emma?”

She pursed her lips a little, just a little, enough so I could see them tremble, and then she turned them down into a slight frown. “Because you’re special,” she said.

Didn’t see that coming.  I wondered where she’d heard that, but didn’t ask.   I also resisted the impulse to reject this little gift, from this little giver; this big person’s truth, from this small child.  I simply stared at her, marveling at the wisdom of God to teach me these lessons from the one person in all the world from whom I could learn them.

“Papa?”

“Emma.”

“You know what I think?”

“What Emma?”  I’m over by her now, kneeling by her chair, and looking straight into her beautiful, blue eyes.  “What Emma?”

“I think God should make someone else special.  That’s what I think.”

Speechless!  I lean toward her, and in a familiar ritual that she and I have had since she was a toddler, she puts her forehead against mine, and we just sit there like that for a while.  I say, “I’m thinking you’ll come and see Nana and me in Jerusalem someday.”

“Yeah,” she says.  “I’m thinking when I’m eight.”

What a joy she is to Sally and me!

As I reflect back on this conversation, and others like this, I wonder if my own children, when they were this little, had this kind of wisdom.  I worry that I didn’t listen to them like I listen to Emma.  When you get to be a grandparent, you listen more slowly than you did when you were younger.

Maybe this year, you and I will listen more slowly to the children in our midst. And if so, maybe we'll learn the lessons that God can only teach us through the least among us.

Emma is right, you know.  Her Nana and I are special.  And so is she, and so are you.  Holy is the biblical word for it.  Because our God is holy, we are holy – special.  And whether we go to far away places, or whether we stay close to home, we make a difference.  Actually, to be more theologically correct, we are the difference.  We put our holy selves in places that need holy presence, and we are the difference.  That's what I think!

Have a holy ’08!  And come see us in Jerusalem someday.