Go out of your way

“Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.” Luke 11:36 NIV

Two things you need to know before you read this. First, we have an 18 year old son with autism. He is as unique of a person as I have ever met. Usually he loves babies. One thing he always has done happens when he hears one cry. If we are at Walmart or wherever and he hears a baby crying he walks straight toward the noise, which is unusual because he does not like loud noises. But for a baby, he is on it. We have to find the baby and he has to see that someone is taking care of him or her.

Second, we have a granddaughter who is about 5 weeks old. I thought it would be fun to watch our son integrate her into our house. He asks about her constantly. I know he already loves her, but early on he would not look at her. He literally covered his eyes once. Interesting, but also aggravating.

Then came this past Saturday. We got to help her escape her own boring home for our much more exciting one. That just means we got to have her for a more extended time. Aly and Logan were not there so I wondered how this would go. He started off tentative. But that wore off. Then he just would stare at her. He is about 6’4” so when he stopped to look at her if she was one the floor he towered over her. But he watched her.

Later in the day she was crying. This is normally the noise that make him seek out the baby but while he is doing that the noise of the baby crying is trying to repel him back. He hates hearing a baby cry but he heads toward the noise. It is the only time he does that. At one point he walked up to her while she was crying and he found her pacifier and put it in her mouth. Then he stood there and just looked at her. She responded by looking back to him. I have shared deep glazes with both of them. This is the first time they shared one with each other. Mary and I just sat there and watched as they exchanged love. It was pretty cool.

Fast forward to Saturday night. The baby had been kidnapped - her parents picked her up - and Korbin was getting ready for bed. Every night he goes and lays in our bed for a few minutes before getting up and going to his own room. When he does, he throws everything on our bed onto the floor. We usually make sure there is no laundry there for that reason, it all gets tossed if there is.

But this time, he encountered a toy named Oscar. It is a little stuffed toy that makes a noise sort of like a wooden wind chime. Not loud, peaceful. All three of our kids have played with it. He didn’t throw Oscar on the floor though. Instead, he brought him out to the living room where we had a little play mat that Harlee had been on. He neatly placed Oscar on the mat and walked back in to throw everything else off the bed.

This may not sound like much, but it is so huge. We have watched him have empathy for people since he was little. But we got to watch as his reaction to her went from not being able to look at her to trying to care for her. He got past the point of being so nervous he couldn’t look directly at her face and thought she might need this piece of comfort. Then he went out of his way to show love for this tiny person he is trying to figure out. It really was beautiful.

Every time I read an account of someone meeting a heavenly being – an angel or Jesus in His glory, the human in the encounter is told to “fear not”. In biblical accounts of heaven people divert their eyes from the shear magnitude of light emanating from our Creator. The love is so bright we cannot comprehend.

I look at my wife every day. When I do, can she tell that I feel the light her Creator put inside of her?

When she looks at me, am I emanating love for her so bright she can see it?

Challenge: Love for our spouse and love for our creator may start out bright deep inside of us, but we let too much every day business cover it until it looks dull and ordinary. Go out of your way to make sure the people in your life can see love emanate from you.

Rick Claiborn