Grandpa's black boots towered as he moved around the garden, talking to me about whatever he was planting that week. I followed him everywhere. My favorite part of the day was riding along to the wood mill, he'd set me in the wheelbarrow for the ride there, fill it with wood shavings once we arrived, and I'd walk alongside him the whole way back to spread them across the chicken coop floor.
On Saturday nights, I'd sit on a little chair wedged between his legs to watch our favorite show, and he'd always ask for some of my snack. "Grandpa, you always want some of mine," I'd say... and then give him as much as he wanted anyway.
That closeness, the kind where someone's presence is just a given, woven into every ordinary part of your day is the closest thing I know to how Scripture describes the relationship at the center of everything.
Before there was anything to be close to
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made... the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us." (John 1:1–3, 14)
Christ wasn't created alongside everything else. He was already there, already known, already loved, before there was a garden, a wheelbarrow, or a world to put either one in. Proverbs describes it almost like a father delighting in a child: "I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Proverbs 8:30). Not distant. Not formal. Present, the way Grandpa's boots were always somewhere nearby.
The hardest goodbye you've never had to say
I still grieve the ordinary moments I used to have with my grandfather, now that he's gone. If a decade of wheelbarrow rides can leave that much of an ache, I can't fully picture what it cost the Father to let His Son step away from an eternity of that same closeness to come here, to us, on our behalf.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him." (John 3:16–17)
Not sent to keep score. Sent to bring us home.
Room enough for us in that closeness
What gets me most is that the story doesn't end with the Son coming to earth. It ends with an invitation back into that same nearness for us. Jesus prayed it directly, the night before He died:
"That all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You... Father, I want those You have given Me to be with Me where I am, and to see My glory, the glory You have given Me because You loved Me before the creation of the world." (John 17:21, 24)
The eternal Family didn't just make room to visit us. They made room for us to belong.
Look again
I was never anything special to deserve a seat between my grandfather's legs on a Saturday night — I was just his, and he wanted me close. That's the whole of it, really. Whatever we've gotten wrong, however far we've wandered, we're still wanted close enough to share a seat.
Until next time,
Michelle
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