When will you be able to hug your grandchildren? Is COVID keeping you apart, or is it distance? Whatever it is, here is a way you can find peace and purpose in the meantime.
Has COVID social distancing kept you from your family? Or is it the miles between the cities where you live? Is it fear of the virus, or strained relationships, or busy schedules that keep you from hugging your grandchildren?
Science proves what we’ve known since we held that first grand baby. Hugging grandchildren is good for us physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s good for the children, too. So here we are, still in a nationwide hugging lockdown. How are we to overcome?
I came across a chapter in a book written by Robert Morgan called Always Near that helped me.
What to do When you Can’t Hug your Grandkids
Doing the Next Thing
He says that we find strength and meaning in doing the next thing.
It doesn’t have to be something big or important. We don’t need personally to get the vaccine rolled out or to open closed businesses. Or even to spend a long day at Safari Park with your grandchildren.
But we can decide to do the next little thing. Making the bed. Calling a friend. Putting something away that’s been sitting out.
God keeps in step with us in the little things. In whatever we do.
Whatever You Do
Not surprisingly, the Bible is all over “whatever you do”. Check out these verses:
Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
and he will establish your plans. Proverbs 16:3And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Colossians 3:23
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. I Corinthians 10:31Do you see that God would be in your “whatever you do”?
He doesn’t want us to abide in fear or anxiety or lethargy. He will be with us as we do the next thing… whatever we do….
God first alluded to the “whatever you do” principle in the Old Testament.
For who despises the day of small things? ~Zechariah 4:10
That’s helpful! My days are made up of small things. I don’t need to despise the little things in life because God is in the small things.
I can do the next things, whatever I do, before the Lord.
The French monk François de La Mothe summarized it for us:
“Cheered by the presence of God, I will do at each moment, without anxiety, according to the strength which He shall give me, the work that His Providence assigns me. I will leave the rest without concern; it is not my affair. I ought to consider the duty to which I am called each day, as the work that God has given me to do, and to apply myself to it in a manner worthy of His glory, that is to say, in exactness and peace.”
To recap, here is how you can find peace and purpose when you can’t hug your grandchildren:
- Do the next thing.
- Whatever you do, do it for the Lord.
What’s Next?
Pray this prayer over your day:
Lord, you know I love my grandchildren and that I miss them. You see the loss I feel and you care. I trust that you have good things for me now while I am missing the time together and the hugs. Help me to do the next thing, to find meaning in doing the little things, and peace in waiting before you. Please help me to see them soon. Amen.
If you’d like more, you can get Robert Morgan’s book Always Near: 10 Ways to Delight in the Closeness of God here.
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