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 I
was standing outside  Sheila's
office, waiting until she
finished a
telephone
conversation
before going in to
ask
her a question. While I was
waiting,
her college-aged daughter,
Lori,
came up and walked
through the open door.
She said
something to her mother
and her mom put her hand
over the receiver and spoke
to her. Lori then walked around
Sheila's desk and took some
candy from
the table beside
her desk.
Watching the
warm interchange,
I began to smile
and continued
observing the
two. While
Sheila talked on, her
daughter opened
her mother's
purse
which was
setting on the floor under
her desk
and took out some money.
Her mother was watching and
did not flinch but continued her conversation.
She smiled
and nodded
approvingly to Lori. Then
the daughter left the
office. Lori had walked boldly into
her mother's office in
a manner that only her child would have
been able to get away with. She knew that she was welcome and that it would
be all right with
her mother for her to go right in
and ask, and then, having obtained her approval, to take what she had asked
for. Lori had
seemed to be confident that she would
have approval before she even asked. I, on the other hand, was not Sheila's
child, and
I would have been rightfully reprimanded
had I gone in boldly and done as the daughter had.
Many call God, "The
Man Upstairs." Others say, "The Good
Lord." These people and others who know God only from a distance, or perhaps
they don't acknowledge Him at all, would
never walk right into His presence. On the other hand, those of us who have
come to know Him as Father, and who have become
His children through faith in Jesus Christ, have had God's scepter of grace
extended to us as a sign that we may
boldly enter into His holy presence. He tells us in Hebrews
4:16, "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."
As His children we have been given this kind of access to our Father and
we need to take advantage of it.
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