We just spent a few days with our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters in Georgia. It had been way too long since we were last together. There were bouts of illness and travel constraints and construction projects which kept us apart for several months. Basically, 2020 happened. Enough about that.
I can't tell you how sweet it was to hear the little girl squeals and giggles. To push the swings and watch the riding lessons. To cook old family favorites and sit at a beautifully appointed table to give thanks; ending up with equally-stuffed bellies and hearts.
Inevitably thoughts turned toward Christmas. The girls were sitting on the floor when I asked the burning question, "What do you want for Christmas?" The list was short - an American Girl dollhouse to share and maybe a camper, too. Then my seven-soon-to-be-eight-year-old granddaughter quietly spoke. "There's one more thing I want but you can't get it for me." Now that's a grandma-size-challenge if I ever heard one so I prompted her to tell. What she said snatched my breath away. "I want Covid to be over."
I had no answer. "I would if I could, sweet girl... for you and for us all."
She's seven. She should be thinking about dolls and books and games and lights and trees. Hot chocolate and candy and Christmas carols. But her little heart holds a much bigger hope. She wants the days of isolation and separation to be over. She wants normal things to be normal again. She wants the world to be put right. But even grandmothers do not have the power to accomplish these things.
Yet, for her and all my grandbabies, for you and yours, there are a few things I can do: I can wear a mask and wash my hands and stand on the appointed circles in the grocery store; I can pray fervently for her greatest wish to be granted by the God who placed it in her heart; and I can hold out hope for the healing that will surely come, sooner or later, riding with the Heaven-Born-One. For, though I am powerless in the face of this pandemic, He is not. He has not forgotten a single one of us, seven or eight or seventy or eighty. We are struck down but not destroyed. We are hard pressed on all sides but not crushed. We are perplexed but not in despair. All this we know because of the great might which resides, not in us, but in our God. And so, in your mercy, O Lord, we beseech you to hear the heart of my seven-soon-to-be-eight-year-old granddaughter and wing your way to earth again. Selah.
Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King!
- Charles Wesley
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