Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“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.”
John 3:16 (NIV)
It will forever be there, right next to me. It’s a note from my younger granddaughter, Ellie.
I move it around a bit so it doesn’t get knocked off the desk area when I’m writing. But never so far away that I can’t always reach it. And it’s always in plain sight so I can read the words she wrote in pencil that day over five years ago.
I wonder where the time has gone. And here we are at the end of another year, heading to the celebration of another Christmas season. And the journey of this year and of the life of Ellie and her older sister, leaves me wondering where the time has gone.
Anyway, I can see it now as I’m sharing with you. It’s a Plexiglas stand about six inches tall. On one side my younger granddaughter, Ellie, glued a pad of “Sticky Notes” for me to use as I am working and writing. And on the other side she placed a sticky note on a beautiful piece of scrapbook paper now all contained within the sleeve on one side of the Plexiglas stand—so I can easily and often read her note to me.
In pencil, in script, with love at age six she wrote:
Dear Gran,
I hope you like it. I love you.
Merry Christmas! 
With care.—
Ellie
And she tied it all up with a beautiful teal-colored ribbon.
She did a better job at drawing the heart at the end of the exclamation point on her original note, but my effort to recreate it above, is a comparable effort of love as hers in decorating my “sticky-note” holder.
Ellie’s notes, as well as Hannah’s, our older granddaughter, through the years are all over the house—stuck on the sides of kitchen cabinets, among my note pads near my usual morning quiet-time area, stored with all the pictures they have painted on the easel in my (our) office upstairs. Notes, pictures, paintings—always kept near just to remind us of every bit of them.
I was talking to a friend the other day who lost a young daughter years ago to cancer and today, with his bride, does some remarkable things—out of that difficulty—to help find a cure for pediatric cancer. It was his daughter’s desire before the cancer took her life, to help others, and to date through Stop Children’s Cancer, they have raised over six million dollars to help fund pediatric cancer research at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine.
And now God had also given him a granddaughter.
And during our brief conversation, we noted that he and I occupied the same roles with our respective granddaughters—caregivers, protectors, fetch and delivery guys, comforters, strong towers for them to climb upon. And maybe most importantly, we are their “yes” when they need one, along with many other sacred roles which only granddaddies can properly occupy.
And the moments his granddaughter has already created with him and his wife, her grandmother, are forming a scrapbook of cherished memories of moments never to happen again, but memories forever theirs.
Like the moment from over two-thousand years ago which we celebrate again in a few weeks—the birth of God’s Son, in a manger, in a stable, in Bethlehem—for you and for me.
A reminder of the love of God for you and for me—and all the world.
And it’s not unlike the note of love to me from Ellie in Plexiglas still sitting right next to me. But the note of love we will celebrate at Christmas is not only a note for me, but also for you and all the world everywhere.
A note through the ages reminding us again, that with His life, and in love, God wrote—
Dear Gran,
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.
Jesus
A simple note of a majestic moment of love, a moment of hope, of life eternal to embrace and cherish now and forever and ever and ever.
Amen and Amen.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2015. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
