My son pulled each of the happily sleeping snails off the wall and put them all together in a group on the grass. The snails stayed safely in their shells for quite a while. But then they foolishly peered out to see if the excited boy had gone away. He hadn't. He was ready and waiting. As they slowly started to crawl away, he would pick them up, chat to them and show them to me. I laid on the grass next to him; watching him, chatting to the snails as they were introduced to me and simply enjoyed our slow-paced moment together. Our lovely moment lasted quite a while, until the snails eventually got to go for a wild ride in a yellow tipper truck. Unfortunately one of the snails didn't quite make it to tell his friends all about his high speed adventures, may he rest in pieces...
3 o'clock arrived and the three older brothers returned from school, and quadrupled the amount of testosterone in the house. Whilst I got dinner on the go, kept up with the potty training and divided and conquered when needed, my precious snail moment drifted from my mind. My sweet snail-loving boy changed into being the slightly bugging younger brother, and slightly disobedient and tantrummy youngest son. I tried hard to think back to our snail moment, and realised that it seemed easier to love my boy in the precious, slow-paced, and uninterrupted moments rather than in the real-life, busy and chaotic moments. And straight away I was thankful that God doesn't deal with me like that. He loves me when I give Him my undivided attention, appreciate His creation and talk freely to Him. He also loves me just as much when I'm bugging others, disobeying Him and tantrumming. I therefore made a choice to love my boy during his not so loveable moments, knowing that God loves me during mine.
"Whoever
does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Dear
friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
1 John 4v8&11
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