No interruption

Huw Williams | 21:19, Saturday 30 March 2013 | Turin, Italy

I am working at my desk when I gradually become aware of that feeling of being watched. I lift my eyes up from the book I am reading and look to the left, out of the bedroom door and into the hall, where Kitty is motionless, beaming, waiting. "Hello!" I cry, "Are you coming to see me?" A joyful yelp and she is all arms and legs and nodding head, a frantic bundle of energy crawling at full pelt, her palms slapping on the floor tiles and breathless with the exertion, she rushes headlong into her Daddy's arms. It is a most welcome interruption, no – it is no interruption at all – it is the highlight of my morning. 

When she has got bored of cuddling Daddy, Kitty returns to the floor and hurries over to the guitar behind my office chair. This guitar is so placed because of the common musician's gripe about how visitors to the house often consider musical instruments fair game for common usage. 

Forgive me this - a sensitive musician's foible it may well be, but that's for another blog and the guitar remains in the bedroom out of strange hands. But somehow I don't mind when Kitty puts her sticky fingers over it (I can always wipe it clean later) and twangs the strings mercilessly, making the most unmusical noise I have heard since I last saw 'The X-Factor'.

And suddenly I realise that no other interruption could ever be so welcome, the ringing phone, the buzzing doorbell the chiming email alert, would all prompt a sinking feeling and maybe even a muttering of a word or two under my breath about how I need to work. But this is different, because Kitty is different. My heart is engaged and thus different rules apply.

I can't help but wonder what goes through God's heart when His children joyfully and enthusiastically enjoy their Father's embrace. Is this even what Jesus meant when he spoke of us becoming like little children? I don't pretend to be as loving and as kind as God - not even close - but if this is the kind of thing which can work in my selfish heart, how much more wonderful it must be to engage with the living God whose heart is poured out in love to us, even sending His Son to die on the cross for us! 

"If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13)