I was recently able to spend the greater part of a week with my newest grandson, Phoenix. Yep, my baby girl had a baby boy and she is a GREAT mother to him.

Young Phoenix is helpless and that’s how God gives new life to us as parents. God places these precious ones into our hands and we have to teach them in every conceivable way, helping them to thrive. The only thing Phoenix really knows to do and do well is to cry. He has discovered that crying gets attention and attention is what a newborn desperately needs.

I couldn’t help but watch my daughter’s love and joy around this little guy, mothering him, happily doing everything for him even when it’s 4:00 AM. She told me in conversation, “All he does is sleep and eat, poop and cry and we LOVE him.”

I remember those days…perhaps you do as well. To love someone so much and yet the only return you get, you desire, is that they breathe the breath of life. Your acceptance of them is based not on their performance, but on their mere existence.

That’s you; that’s me in the Father’s sight, before we accomplish anything He loves us, approves of us and treasures us. We are His “treasured possession.” (See Deuteronomy 7:6)