On being a grandfather

In a few months, Lord willing, my oldest daughter will give birth to a baby girl. I guess God has been preparing me for that for years. When she (my daughter) was a baby, I started working in the church nursery, partly because I enjoyed it and partly to duck church services from time to time. My faith and commitment were shallow to say the least. Slowly but surely I began to see the love in those little eyes. I made friends with the babies and found that they loved me without reservation. How strange that was. Sometimes I was a surrogate dad to babies with no fathers at home. Sometimes a baby came in upset and needed a familiar face. Many, many times I would calm a crying baby just by holding her or him. Now, some 24 years later, I can look back and see the hand of Jesus in my experiences, tugging and pushing and touching. I am a different man now, and it started in the nursery. The love I shared with babies was the mirror of God's love. Not that I am able to love like God does, but that I felt a bond of caring and nurturing that made me want to protect them and care for them, even though they were helpless and sometimes very difficult. God so loves us that he gave his baby, his only baby, to make us whole. Now I can see something of what his love means.
What I want for my grandchildren, and the many other babies and children I touch from time to time, is that they will know who Jesus is through me.
I was given the name G'ampa C by a child who used to meet in our family group on Sunday nights. He had a G'ampa Steve who kind of looked like me, glasses, red beard, etc. He was only three and no one knew how he arrived at it, but it stuck. Their family has moved to Arkansas, and the parents of the two most recent additions to our "family" think of me as G'ampa C.
What a blessing it will be to try to love my grandchildren so much that they will know instinctively something of what Jesus is like. I guess God has been getting me ready for a long time. Wish I had listened better when my children were babies.