The treasure is you, you see

One night last week, I found my older two children quarreling for what felt like the dozenth time that day. In frustration and weariness, I sent them upstairs with the declaration: "I am deeply disappointed in you!" A little while later, my husband went up to help them resolve their conflict, and by the time I climbed the steps, my son was sitting in a small ball at the top of the stairs, his big brown eyes full of tears. "Do you forgive me, Mommy?" he asked, and my anger quickly melted, and I stooped down and gave him a hug and my assurance of forgiveness. But his questions were not finished. "Do you still like me?" he continued. "Do you still love me?"

His anguish pierced me, and I stooped down again, this time picking him up and holding him close. I was at a loss until I remembered the words to a song by Andrew Peterson, and so I held my small boy and sang:

I'll love you today and I'll love you tomorrow

I love you as deep as the sea

I'll love you in joy and I'll love you in sorrow

You can always come home to me

In the song, Peterson retells two of what are perhaps my most favorite parables in all of Scripture. One is Jesus' story about the shepherd who has 100 sheep and, when one lamb goes missing, leaves the 99 to look for the lost little lamb. The second is the story about a man who finds treasure in a field, and then goes and sells all he has to buy that field and keep the treasure forever. As Peterson puts it, "The treasure is you, you see!"

I thought about treasure this week as I sat on a swing down at the playground in our housing complex. I held my toddler in one arm and a dear Tanzanian toddler in the other, and I looked out over the playing field to where my husband and older children played "catch-and-catch" (tag) with a posse of neighbor children. The evening air was sweet, and a big moon was visible over the treetops, and the mosaic of skin colors that filled the playing field (whites and browns of all shades) was beautiful to me. I felt like Jesus standing over Jerusalem, longing to gather all the people under him, like a mother hen and her chicks. I wanted to gather up each of these precious children and tell them that they are beloved of God, that they are a treasure to him.

What seems romantic in the moonlight, however, often takes a different shape in the glare of the sun. When one of these precious children says something that wounds my tall daughter, my first thoughts are not loving. When this mosaic shows its sharp edges, when the cultures clash and misunderstandings crop up, I feel the distance between us. The more I get to know these neighbors, the more I am aware of all that I don't know. One of my daughter's friends, who I have assumed is Indian, reveals that she is Sri Lankan, and her mother has assumed we are Canadian. A lovely mama from Kenya shares that she is Somalian by birth. The two young women I chat with at the playground, who both are nannies for small children in this complex, are not Tanzanian, but Ugandan, and both are even more homesick than I am. I am amazed at the layers within the stories here, and I see, again, what a slippery concept home is. Simply put, home is what you know. Home is where you are known.

How can I love any of these treasured ones (my children or my neighbors) unless I am able to know and be known by a love much deeper than my own? In my awkwardness and woundedness and homesickness, I turn again to the One who is my everlasting home. I turn and with tears in my eyes, I look to my Heavenly Father and say, "Do you forgive me? Do you still like me? Do you still love me?" And in the stillness of a warm Tanzanian night, I hear the whisper of the Spirit answer... 

I love you today and I'll love you tomorrow 

I love you as deep as the sea

I'll love you in joy and I'll love you in sorrow 

You can always come home to me