One of the best blogging communities on this earth is Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday crew. I love Five Minute Friday because the rules don’t allow much time for me to get to brainy about my words. There are no edits, no proofreading, or rewording of sentences.
We write around a single prompt, hit publish, link up, and connect with each other in the comments.
I find my heart most often bleeds through the keyboard on Fridays. This Friday that is so true.
The prompt today is Glue.
Background: This is one of the most intimate stories I’ll ever tell. Malone’s preschool salvation story happened while we were in Florida spending time with Mike’s 93 year old grandmother before she passed away.
Go
I had noticed all week that he had been looking very carefully at a figurine on his Grandmother’s coffee table. That figurine wasn’t your typical grandmother coffee table fluff.
It was beautiful.
Ornate.
It told the stories of Jesus’s last week.
“Mama, why is Jesus hanging on that cross?” he asked with his little eyes glued to mine. “Why are those soldiers being mean to him?”
I had been praying for this day to come. I just didn’t think it would come when he was so little.
He’s walking the tight rope line between baby and big kid at 4.5. He understands and gets so much, but his world is still a very fragile place.
I took a deep breath and cried out to God. How do you explain something so big to someone so small?
I didn’t have a fancy video to use, a booklet, or a game.
I only had my words. And the seeds that had been sown in our home and at our church.
In the simplest language possible I told him the truth. The truth that I’ve known since I was 13 years old.
God loves us so much, Malone. That he sent his son Jesus to earth. Jesus came to earth because we do bad things that keep us from God. Jesus died on the cross so our bad things won’t keep us from God. He wants to live in our hearts and help us everyday. Jesus wants to live again in your heart. He will be with you forever, if you ask Him.
“I want that mama, I want Jesus in my heart.”
So there together, on the floor of his dying great grandmother’s living room, we prayed.
STOP
That is really beautiful. What a special moment.
Claire recently posted..Glue #FMF
Thanks Claire! It was a moment that I’ll remember forever!
Beautiful!
Thank you Kathryn!
What a beautiful ornament and what a beautiful story. I never understood how desperately God wants us to accept Jesus until I had children and so desperately wanted them to accept Jesus.
Anita Ojeda recently posted..Jesus Wasn’t Pretty (but Neither is Glue)
I wish I had a better picture of it, it is absolutely stunning in person.
I never realized how much God loved me until I had children.
You’re making me cry! What a precious, precious moment! That is what every believing mother wants for her child. So sweet!
I really and truely thought that this conversation would have come up much later in Malone’s life. That just goes to show that I know zero about God’s timing.
I love this… and what a gift to have met Jesus right there, in the midst of death and dying and living on the other side…
My Only Girlie, at 4.5 years old, asked Jesus into her heart at bedtime, in the dark, laying side by side as she wept at the words of the song she always requested to be sung… the song she still wants sung when we squeeze together, side by side, and sing her to sleep.
Praying for you this weekend, to have a blessed Easter – Malones first as a Christian! What a gift to grow up in the Truth!
Love you, friend!
~Karrilee~ recently posted..When Glue Won’t Hold Us All Together – Five Minute Friday
It is such a gift, for sure. One of the last things we got to tell Michael’s grandmother was that Malone asked Jesus into his heart.
I love hearing your story. Can you come sing me to sleep too?
So I guess it happened then, right? Jesus IS in his heart.
I wonder a lot about Scarlet and Des and where they’ll find faith and enlightenment. In Judaism, in Christianity, or in something new and unique. Or a mix of all like their parents and grandparents.
It’s an awe-inspiring journey.
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It did. And I don’t have a good reason why, other than God’s timing is perfect. I often wonder we find religion, or if religion finds us.
so there is our Jesus giving new life from life … our inheritance knows no bounds.
Amen.
NJ, thank youso much for sharing such a precious part of your life and Malone’s story with us. What a blessing!
Amy Tilson recently posted..Five Minute Friday – Glue
Oh I am so glad I scrolled up from my entry at the opposite end of the link list. This was the perfect post to read on Easter Sunday. A beautiful moment and how wonderful that it was one of the last things his (great?) grandmother heard. We may be crying, the angels were rejoicing.
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