But he was the only one I know who would have responded to the bumbling buzzing of the Japanese beetle above our heads by reaching up an eager hand to catch it. Others' hands would have tried to slap the great green thing in the air or to bat at it fearfully or to aid their fleeing bodies by clearing the way for a frenzied retreat from anywhere near the beetle's clumsy path. But his hand went straight up towards it, and he smiled in delight as it landed on his finger. He brought it down slowly, peering at it joyfully as it fumbled around, burying its head drunkenly into the hairs on his wrist. We admired its delicate beauty; its shell had stripes of a color its beholder called "iridescent green"—for iridescent and green it was! Shimmering in the dapples of sunlight that reached our little table as we conversed outside the coffee shop, this emerald bug held our enamored gazes for some time.
And then, with a slightly mischievous grin (and, I think, an, "I wonder..."), he did it. With his free hand, he dipped a finger into his coffee and brought a single drop up and over to the beetle. The tiny black forelegs reached up and grasped at the dark droplet, and I watched in amazement as it slurped up the coffee and began to clean its face as if it was trying to get every last bit of the drink into its mouth. He gave it one more drop, which was gone even faster. We laughed, and he gave it some water. And then it settled down on his hand. He spoke to it kindly, told it it was time to go. It flattened its antennae just as a dog would flatten its ears as if to say, "No, not yet—please. I don't yet want to go." We laughed at it some more and kept talking. He said, "If you slow down, you see wonders." He was right. That little guy was a wonder. It was beautiful.
After a while, he nudged the beetle off of his finger onto a plant near our table. It sat there contentedly for a few minutes before lifting its great body into the air again and continuing its clumsy course.
I didn't really know what to say after that. As my professor grinned at the beetle fumbling along his finger, one thought flooded my mind: Isn't this just what Jesus would be doing if I was sitting here with Him?
I would bet the disciples' jaws dropped many times as they watched their Master interact with His creation. Maybe right in the middle of a painful conversation, He would reach up and let a beetle alight on His hand. Maybe He answered some of their questions by simply fingering the leaves of a tree. Maybe while they were walking along a dusty path, bickering and biting about the greatest in the kingdom or some other "important" matter, He was kneeling at the edge of the road, watching a rabbit nibble or a lizard disappear under a rock. And if they had been paying attention, they would have realized that the simple delight He was having could have been theirs.
In watching my professor as he gently cared for the beetle, his smile surely the same smile that crossed the face of the Carpenter countless times all those years ago, a few more thoughts also flitted through my head. One was that this was a picture of how we were meant all along to interact with God's creation. It's there, isn't it, for us to delight in? For us to care for? For us to slow down and enjoy and see at every point our Maker's fingerprints, to give Him glory for it all? I mean, that's what He does with it. Jesus says He pays attention to the sparrows. He clothes the blades of grass. Why else do you think He crafts sculptures in the clouds or sends a sunrise to light up a bustling, distracted city? We may not be taking the time to enjoy it, but He is—every time.
I don't know about you, but when I actually slow my mind down enough to take in my Master's handiwork, I realize that it's singing. It's enraptured, endlessly, in a melody about the pure love, the relentless joy, and the perfect gentleness of the One who gave it life and holds it all together. He is so gentle with it, isn't He? I mean, if He's able to stitch together a dragonfly's wings, fashion the beautiful details of the microscopic world, direct the path of a molecule of water in an ocean wave, care for the birds and the beasts, and, gosh, cherish us...My hands aren't that strong, but I break things when I try to hold them sometimes. Yet His...With perfect gentleness—perfect because His strength is channeled towards tenderness—He holds His world and smiles at it.
And you know what that means? It means that's how He's holding us, too.
That beetle was completely safe and completely loved in my professor’s hands. It was happy. It got some coffee. It didn't want to leave.
Do we realize that we are safe? Safe in the hands of the One whose tender touch and sweet breath continually give us life?
Do we realize that we are loved? That His love is the sort that isn't phased by the list of frustrations we have with ourselves, that isn't disheartened when we trip and fall in the mud, that can't be disappointed, that can't be changed, that can't be decreased, that can't end?
I know—really, I do—how hard it is to feel like this is true sometimes. But it is. And, frankly, we can't do anything about it.
When I started writing this post, I intended to leave you with this last part in the form of a question. I was wondering, myself, whether the perspective I was about to frame was a good one. I can't do that now. I've convinced myself otherwise. There can be no other way.
So instead of a question, dear heart, I give you an instruction, an exhortation, an encouragement: Deal gently with yourself. Your Maker isn't eyeing your list of frustrations. He's not paying attention to the disqualifications you've laid out for Him to see. He's not even hampered by the mold in your corners, the stuff you were trying to make sure He didn't see. He's not wondering if you'll stumble again on your way into His arms. He doesn't care if you flunked that class in high school or don't see yourself as able to participate in that beauty pageant. The pimples and the problems—and even the certificated successes—don't bother Him. He just wants you.
You see, as much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, His heart only has one disposition toward us. It's what the Hebrew writers called ḥesed, what the English translators render over and over again "steadfast love." It's covenant love, love sealed by blood, love that doesn’t quit. We mess up. We have the ability, I guess, to gather a list of all the things that make us dirty. But if He's not making that list, then we shouldn't either. If He has not condemned us, then we don't get to condemn ourselves. If He's decided to keep holding our cells together, to keep breathing into our lungs, then maybe we'd better stop cringing at the ways we think we've failed. Maybe we ought to let Him lift our chins and grasp our hands—and just accept His invitation to dance.
His call, as I see it in every flickering leaf and humming breeze, is to deal as gently with ourselves as my professor dealt with that beetle—for that, creation cries, is the same gentleness with which He is ever dealing with us.
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