It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Luke 17:2 

Not surprisingly, my grandchildren are still very much on my mind this morning. Today it’s the purity, the innocence, and the sense that their spirits are intimately connected with the heart of God.

Sunday morning my iPhone/camera didn’t make it into church with me. No surprise, really, considering I had Ms. Hefty Baby on my right hip, Mr. Hop The Steps Like a Bunny holding my left hand, a huge diaper bag on my left shoulder, and a bag full of toys hanging off the index finger of my right hand.

A teenager helped me in, and we collapsed in a little heap on the floor in the unofficial “small children’s area” at the back right of the church. There was room for the grandkids to spread out, and Naomi’s friend Jen was there with her toddler too, along with her very helpful mom.

The kids were wonderful. Beks eventually wanted me to hold her, and that meant standing most of the time, but the only noises she made involved bubble-blowing (her specialty), cooing while grinning at me, and the occasional attempt at harmonizing with the choir. Then, late in the worship service, Beks caught me completely off guard:

We’d just said The Lord’s Prayer ( during which David stopped playing and reached out to hold my hand all the way through to the “Amen”).

The choir responded with “Where you there when they crucified my Lord.” Beks was swaying with me to the music, and the refrain came, Sometimes it causes me to wonder, wonder, wonder… and I found myself wondering, and as I did my nine-month-old granddaughter looked me full in the face and she smiled in such a knowing, innocent, fresh from the heart of God way that – for a moment – I just crumbled. I thought about the depth and scope of a love that would sacrifice so much; and – just for a minute or so – I felt that I had captured a glimpse into the heart of such love.

Such instances of insight just scratch the surface of God, I understand that; yet they undo me every time.

God met me yesterday morning, there in the back corner of a tiny Congregational church, in the gathering of God’s people, in the simple singing of an old hymn, in the radiant smile of a child.

God met me where he always does, right in the middle of real life. If only we would open our eyes more often and see…