Are you upside-down?

"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Romans 10:13

My Amazing Boy was playing with a “roly poly” bug recently.  We were waiting outside Ye Olde Lube & Tune Shoppe for our carriage to be re-oiled.  He and I sat on the curb ~ I was doing something productive and useful (playing solitaire) and he letting one of those funny little critters crawl on his hand. 

The little bug would walk across the length of his palm, and he would then put his second hand next to his first hand, so the bug could keep walking.  Then when he’d crossed that one, the first hand would be there waiting.  AB said, with not a little glee, “Look!  I can decide how long his pathway is!”  There’s a fascinating feel to having that much power of something, isn’t there?  Especially when you’re the youngest in the family.  He has spent his life with everyone telling him what to do.  The only chance he has to be “in charge” is over the dog, and she sees him as more of a playmate than a master.  And the cat…. Well, she’s a cat.  And you know how they are…

So he held this little life in his little hands.  Well, giant hands, to the roly poly.  And for a minute, an analogy popped into my head, of our relationship to God.  But that analogy didn’t sit with me for very long.  There was too much that didn’t fit.  My son, after all, didn’t create the bug.  And his feelings for the bug, while he certainly wouldn't have hurt it, were about fascination, not really love and compassion.  And putting his hands one after the other, to make the bug keep crawling forever was sort of toying with him.  God doesn’t treat us that way.   It’s not a cat-and-mouse game we’re playing.  Or Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.  {Go ahead:  google it.  I’ll wait.}

But then Amazing Boy said something that was entirely God-like.  He saw a second roly poly on the ground, upside-down.  And he said excitedly, "Ooh!  I can save this one!"  And that, my friends, is the essence of God.  Like in the Parable of the Lost Sheep, He sees each one of us as lost, dying in our sin, until we are picked up in His hand, and turned right-side-up.  And just as my sweet boy was excited to have the opportunity, so God rejoices every time a sinner repents.

So you can see yourself as a spider, being dangled over a fire (another Jonathan Edwards' reference); or you can see yourself gently held in the hand of the Creator.  He loves you with a tender compassion that is unmatched here on earth.  (Although, a 10 year old boy with a heart of gold comes close!)  And if you're feeling upside-down, take heart!  Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved!