What the Father Must Feel

So, we had our two-year-old in the Emergency Room this past weekend. She had fallen on our porch steps and gotten a pretty serious cut on her forehead. After several shots and five stitches, she was good to go. Honestly, she did better with it than we did. She even went to a gymnastics birthday party two hours later!

Anyway, several truths about the Father shone through as I reflected on the whole experience:

1) The emotions I felt as she was in pain and bleeding - is that how God feels when we hurt ourselves through the ways we act and the choices we make? My tears for her as she was hurting - does God weep over us in the same way when we're suffering from our self-inflicted wounds?

2) Sometimes it takes a little more pain for the wounds we have to be healed. The shots, the stitches - they hurt for a moment, but they keep the wound from becoming infected and leaving a scar that lasts a life-time. Sometimes the wound even has to be reopened for the infection to be let out so healing can occur.

3) God cares enough to answer prayer to the smallest detail. One of our friends prayed that the ER staff would say that our little one had done better than anyone her age in this situation. The staff said exactly the words... If God cares about influencing even the tiniest details as we pray, He cares about the big-picture in all of our lives.