My daughter, while she lived on campus for the past two years, developed a real liking for granola bars. It’s logical. As she ran to her first class of the morning because her alarm wasn’t loud enough and her shower had to be shortened, granola bars were breakfast. As she had an hour in between classes, granola bars could be lunch if there was no time to visit the food court. (Pizza, however, was always reserved for supper and late nights…)
So when she came home at the end of the semester, with a very small bank balance and a large streak of independence, and not having a rapid success in finding a job, she determined, without me knowing it, not to ask me for things she wanted that she could not get for herself. She was content with having whatever was here. She was learning to be content, as the Apostle Paul was, with what she had at the moment. Until one day, a few weeks ago, she approached me with this…
“Mom, I haven’t asked you for anything special because I know I’m not working, but if you don’t mind, would you buy a box of chocolate chip granola bars?” Then she explained to me why they would be necessary. She doesn’t eat at regular times, she doesn’t want to ask me to fix something she wants but I don’t care for, etc.
And my heart broke. If you’re a mom, yours would have too. Because:
- She had hesitated to ask me for something I had the willingness and the power to provide for her.
- She assumed based on the fact that she had nothing to give me in return that she shouldn’t ask.
- She was so determined to be independent that she wouldn’t ask for my help.
She said, “if you don’t mind” thereby feeling like her asking was imposing on me.
Of course, the next time I went out I bought two of the largest boxes of chocolate chip granola bars I could find and now I weekly replenish them.
Tonight as I was praying, that incident came back to my mind. There’s a reason. There was, in that seemingly minor incident, a correlation between my daughter’s thought processes and ours as Christians sometimes. The Bible says that God is “Father”. He is our Father. His heart is invested even more in us than ours is in our own child, for we were given the power to become the children of God when we were reborn into His family.
And sometimes we hesitate to ask Him for something He has the power and willingness to give us. And we assume because we think we have nothing to give Him, OR have failed to measure up to what we think we should be doing for Him (our working), or…we are so determined to be independent that we won’t ask, that we deprive God, our Father, of His right and his pleasure in giving us what He wants us to have and what we would enjoy.
Now that my daughter understands that (just because she has grown more mature and the world and I do have expectations) her needs are still important to me, that I am still her mother and still take pleasure in giving her what she asks for, that I am willing to do/give/be the same loving parent she has always known. She no longer fails to make eye contact when she wants a granola bar. She no longer feels shame that she asked, and she doesn’t hesitate to go to the shelf and take what I have provided with joy. I get pleasure in the giving. It is just a granola bar. I understand that.
Yet it’s more than a granola bar. So much more. It is an invitation to examine our hearts toward the Father. Do we hesitate to ask? Do we wonder ‘if He will mind’ because we know our performance is less than stellar and our works less than profitable?
We shouldn’t. He defined and demonstrates parenthood, Fatherhood, in the loving hearts and pleasure in the giving that He put in us toward our own children.
Whether it’s a car repair, or a granola bar, or healing in our bodies, or our own broken hearts…God is Provider. He is pleased to give. He has the power to do it all. He sings over us. He rejoices in us. We were made for His pleasure.
Whatever it is, ASK. His love for us is as vast as the heavens from the earth. Don’t break His heart…ASK. If He is your God, He is your Father. Ask.
For His Glory 