Bonfire!

 

We stood side by side, hand-in-hand, my nearly-five-year-old grandson Eliott and me. The heat and noise of the bonfire as it devoured dry branches and leaves caused us to take one or two steps back.

‘I’m afraid of fire,’ I confessed to Eliott.

‘Me too,’ he replied.

‘So I guess you don’t want to be a fireman then when you grow up?’

‘No.’

‘What do you want to be?’

‘A police officer.’

Pause.

‘What do you want to be, Gramma?’

I chuckled inside, nonplussed and amused and unsure how to answer.

‘I’m kind of at the other end of that question,’ I replied. ‘I’ve already been. I’ve been a writer, and a homemaker for my family … ‘

Silence.

‘But what do you want to be, Gramma?’ he asked again.

I smiled.

‘I think I’d like to be a police officer, too.’

I’ve never considered being a police officer, at any point on the spectrum of my life, but somehow it seemed a good reply for Eliott.

I want to be with you, I hope he heard.

Jesus never considered being in many of the places in which I find myself. He never hankered after some of the negative and poor choices I make. But he says again and again, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’

‘I am with you always, even until the end of the world.’ It’s a  promise from the one who is faithful.

Wherever we are, Jesus is there with us, sharing our joy, shouldering our suffering. What a God we have.