Isn't She Lovely!

This is my Zoeybug.
No, she's not my daughter, she's my neice. I have other neices and nephews, but Zoey has been different for me somehow. This is the first little one who is related to me by blood, and that may be what makes her so different. And, I don't want you to think that I am less proud of the others; I dote on all my neices and nephew, I love them all.

But I'm sitting here tonight, looking at the pictures my sister sent of Zoey, and I have this Stevie Wonder song playing through my skull. I assume he wrote it for his daughter, Aisha, but I hope he'll forgive me for singing it for Zoey.

"Isn't She Lovely"

Isn't she lovely
Isn't she wonderful
Isn't she precious
Less than one minute old
I never thought through love we'd be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn't she lovely made from love

Isn't she pretty
Truly the angel's best
Boy, I'm so happy
We have been heaven blessed
I can't believe what God has done
Through us he's given life to one
But isn't she lovely made from love

Isn't she lovely
Life and love are the same
Life is Aisha
The meaning of her name
Londie, it could have not been done
Without you who conceived the one
That's so very lovely made from love


Now, I like this song, and as I said, it keeps playing through my head...but when I get to the third stanza, I hear "Life is my Zoey, the meaning of her name..." and of course, I delight and thrill again...because Zoey's name comes from the greek word, zoe, which DOES mean life.


Well, all of this comes back to something I keep thinking, something that I've realised as I sit here thrilling in her sheer existance. You see, Zoey was born in July, and she lives 1500 miles away from me, so I've only ever seen her in the first two weeks of her life. Oh, those weeks I could be there, as I held her, as I rocked her and fed her and just adored her, everything was right. Here was this tiny little person, this little baby girl, and she could do nothing to make me love her, nothing to earn my adoration, and yet I could do nothing but love her. It thrilled my heart to hold her close, to kiss her head, to rock her to sleep, to watch her tiny face. And now, almost 8 months later, she still can do nothing to earn my love. I haven't seen her since then, and only now got more recent pictures of her. I am sitting here, looking at her picture, looking at her smile, at the gorgeous head full of blonde hair, and I am thrilled again in her existance. Just that Zoey IS is enough to delight my heart.
And that's when I realised that, the way I love her, the way I delight in her, is a portrait, however incomplete, of how God loves us. He doesn't require us to do or be anything to earn His love, just that we exist is reason enough. My God is thrilled that I am, just as I am thrilled that Zoey is.
When I see that kind of love, when I realise that I am loved the way I love her...I find that there is nothing I would not do for the one who loves me. I can think of nothing I would not do to delight Him, to add to His reasons to love me. I never want to disappoint Him, to hurt Him. This is why I live in obedience to His Word, not because I must to earn His approval, but because as I am here, secure in this pure and simple delight and love, I want nothing more than to continue to delight Him.
Thank you, God, for using my beautiful little Zoeybug to teach me more about You!
Isn't she lovely? Isn't He wonderful?