Daddy . . . Wait for Me. Please

During my prayer in our hotel suite, a young child outside the door anxiously called to her father, “Daddy, wait for me, please.” From somewhere down the hall I heard a muffled response, “Come on, we need to go.” A moment later small feet pattered past my door and down the hall.

Caught up in the unseen drama, I replayed the child’s plaintive cry again and again in my mind, “Daddy, wait for me, please.” Although I couldn’t see him, I sensed impatience from his muffled response, “Come on, we need to go.” I guessed he thought they needed to hurry along to get to wherever it was they were going. I can’t know for sure about his impatience. As I said, his voice was muffled.

I let myself muse a while on the unseen scene played out for me in the hotel hallway – until the Holy Spirit suddenly changed my focus. No longer was this about the strangers outside my door. It was about me in similar situations when our children were young.

How often did one of them call out to me, “Daddy, wait for me, please.” Countless times, I’m sure, as I raced to get wherever it was we needed to get to. And I know I must have called impatiently behind me more often than I like to think, “Come on, we need to go.”

“Daddy, wait for me, please.”

How often did the Lord Jesus say to others, “Come, follow Me”?  Lots of times. His offer is embedded from one end of the Gospels to the other.

And oh, how I want to follow Him.

Then why is it so often the case that I get so quickly distracted from following? Like a small child distracted by a bug crawling in the grass, or breezes blowing though leaves – or even by a piece of trash crumpled along the sidewalk – I so often get distracted by what really are trivialities of life that I take my eyes off the Shepherd and dally in the distractions.

And then I notice I’m no longer close to my Daddy in heaven.

“Daddy, wait for me, please.”

What causes a child to be so easily distracted and lose focus? Whatever it is of the many things that catch a toddler’s eye -- whatever it is should not be what causes me to lose focus. At my level of spiritual maturity I should be much better able to fix my eyes on Jesus and follow Him wherever it is He wants me to go.

“Daddy, wait for me, please.”

It’s important for me to tell you, never once has He ever turned back and said impatiently, “Come on. We need to go.” No. Never once. Instead, I’ve so often sensed Him call patiently to me, “Well . . . come along my darling, my beautiful one. Come along.” (see Song of Songs, 2:10)

And never once has He ever turned back and said anything different to you when you call to Him.