“It’s my Valentine card to you, sorry it’s a week late, but we’ve been gone.”
I reached down and took the envelope from her outstretched arm; my nine-year old friend, Sadie, would have to stand on her tip toes to be more than four feet tall.
Her “card” was inside a plain, white envelope, addressed to me in her own writing, penned with a bright red, felt tip marker.
I carried it to my office, along with my Bible and half a dozen other assorted items from the Wednesday evening meetings and placed the envelop with them on my desk, where it would remain until Sunday morning.
“Opps, I almost forgot Sadie’s note,” I thought, as I prepared to enter the sanctuary for worship Sunday.
I carefully opened it.
It was a homemade card, meticulously penned.
“Why you are the Best!!!!” she started.
And then she told me why: “You tell amazing story’s about God and Jesus. I love it, you also are so nice to everybody and you make my day light up!!!!”
Beneath her words, she had drawn a Valentine heart with the words, “Jesus and God,” in them, and to the side of that, another drawing of the Cross, with the caption: “Jesus on the cross.”
I won’t attempt to analyze how a nine-year old connects a Valentine heart with the Cross and Jesus’ sacrifice for us on it. For me, it’s enough that she was trying to say that God loved us in a magnificent and supreme way on the Cross, and to her, that relates to Valentine’s Day, because we are to express love to others on that day by giving notes and cards to people we love.
What mattered to me was that this nine-year old was able to “connect the dots,” in a way many adults in church are too “mature” and “learned” to do. She drew a picture symbolizing God’s love, as she understands it from the Bible, and then from that truth, wrote something encouraging to someone, in this case, me.
Too many of us have forgotten such elementary truths and have long since replaced them with a particular learned defense mechanism: criticism. Adults engage in criticism, often in groups, usually “behind the back” of the person being critiqued.
Even our “compliments,” are often passive-aggressive compliments, that is, a criticism disguised as a compliment, which is no compliment at all. “You’re actually smarter than you look;” “You’re looking good for someone your age;” and my favorite for preachers, “Each sermon is not as bad as the last one.”
Most of us don’t complement others nearly enough. It’s simply easier to criticize, for that is what we adults have learned to do to protect ourselves from what we fear: rejection from others. And so, it becomes a vicious cycle: we do to others before they do to us what we fear: criticize, with the ultimate option of rejection.
Back to Sadi.
Hers were the words of a child, I understand that. She does not know all my flaws, mistakes, and shortcomings. I know that, as well. She hasn’t listened to enough other preachers to recognize that my stories are not all that, “amazing.” I get that, too.
But the child knows enough to take what she understands about God and his love and then, share that with someone who is significant to her.
And so, yes, I know I’m not all the wonderful things she says I am.
But I will nonetheless take that compliment, tuck it away, and bring it out on the rainy days when the more knowledgeable folks remind me otherwise about myself.
And I suppose you would, too.