John believed engines made more sense than people. As a mechanic, he found comfort in gears, bolts, and oil-stained overalls. Machines were predictable; God, on the other hand, was a concept he had long discarded—somewhere between his business failing and the moment he realized no divine hand was coming down to fix it for him.
Then came Emma.
His four-year-old granddaughter was dropped into his life and that of her grandmother like a wrench in a well-oiled engine. His son, came home for a holiday with Emma, feeling a grumpy, grease-smelling old man could handle a toddler with the energy of a thousand lightbulbs.
John wasn’t so sure.
Emma, however, took one look at her grandfather and decided he was hers. She claimed the best armchair, filled the house with crayon drawings, mostly circles and straight lines and asked an endless stream of questions. “Why did the cow jump over the moon?” and then suddenly a strange question, “Do you like God?”
John choked on his tea.
“Like God?” he muttered. “I don’t dislike Him… I just don’t bother Him.”
Emma’s tiny face scrunched up as she considered this. “That’s silly,” she declared, and skipped off.
Days passed, and Emma continued her reign of terror, which meant she continued being a normal four-year-old with an alarmingly high intake for all things her mother forbade. Then one afternoon, as they were in the park, she fell from the slide, and landed hard on her knee. The wail that followed could have woken the dead—or at the very least, alerted the whole housing colony.
John scooped her up, panic briefly slicing through him. “Alright, alright, let’s see,” he said, patting her back as she sobbed into his wet T shirt. “You’re alive. Both legs still attached.”
“But it huuuurts,” she sniffled, rubbing at the scratch like she had just been struck down by a truck. Then she looked up at him with those big, teary eyes and said the words that cracked something in John’s old heart.
“I knew you’d fix it, Grandpa.”
It was such a simple thing. Such unshakable trust. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t wonder if he cared, didn’t doubt his willingness to help.
She just knew.
That night, as Emma snored softly beside him, John stared at the ceiling and thought about the last time he had trusted like that. When had he last believed in anything beyond what he could see, fix, or take apart? When had he last leaned into something bigger than himself, the way Emma had leaned into him?
The next Sunday, John found himself listening to a sermon he hadn’t heard in decades. Emma, beside him, beamed like she had orchestrated the whole thing.
“I told God you were being silly,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author. He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com
