A man who had become a wealthy, successful businessman began to go through some difficulties in the corporate world. His company was struggling. Business was declining and it was causing a great degree of strain. Emotionally he was beginning to collapse under the load of the failures of life. Physically he was struggling and depression was setting in,
He soon began to bring the weight of his struggles home. Every evening he would come to dinner and in silence would block out his wife and his beautiful eight year old daughter. His sweet wife, knowing the burdens that were on her husband, tried to encourage him in every way possible. She would fix his favorite meals. She would have his paper ready for him to read. She would affectionately kiss the one she loved but it seemed that she was just kissing a shell of the man that she knew. After dinner the husband would retire to the den, with newspaper in hand, and would bury himself in the paper and wall his girls out of his life. His precious girl would show daddy the beautiful picture that she had colored, but, the dad indignantly would say,”that’s good, Hon”, and would push her away.
Things were daily becoming more and more strained. His depression deepened. The lovely wife wept as she saw the man she loved slip deeper in despair. The little girl, although young, could tell that something was not right with daddy. She was used to playing “piggy-back” on the floor. Daddy usually would push her in the swing every night when he would come home from work. She was missing the “butterfly kisses” that made her face tickle. Daddy had not said, “I love you” in several days. She loved her daddy.
After several nights of this, one evening he came home from work, quickly ate his meal and went and hid himself in the living room with his newspaper. After a short while the little girl crawled up on the sofa, took her little hand and pushed the newspaper aside. She then jumped up into her father’s lap and began giving him butterfly kisses. Somewhat annoyed, he tried to get her to go away but she would not leave. Finally she wrapped her little arms around her daddy’s neck and hugged him as strong as she could. She would not let go. The dad, breathing heavily, said, “Honey, you are hugging me to death.” The little girl replied into his ear as she continued to squeeze, “no Daddy, I am trying to hug you back to life.”
Often we take the cares of this world and allow them to push us away from God. We can’t enjoy His word and His fellowship. When don’t recognize His graciousness. Then the Lord often times will try to squeeze us with all His goodness to try to bring us back into loving fellowship with Him. Let’s be careful not to let the cares of this world draw us away from the one who loves us most.
Romans 2:4 …..not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
