by Dennis Gladden, By Green Pastures, ©2025
(Jan. 3, 2025) — Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so.
I grew up singing and believing this children’s chorus.
Six decades later, I see another way of knowing Jesus loves me: He lets me in on what He is doing.
I learned this the other night from my almost eight-year-old grandson.
My wife and I had returned from visiting our son in Colorado and our daughter, who borrowed our car in our absence, stopped by to drop it off.
No sooner had our grandson charged into the house than he cranked up the Silent Night music box in our Christmas church decoration and began showing me the present he had brought: a portable bank.
This was not your old-fashioned piggy bank with a slot on top to slip money in and a plug on the bottom to spill it out. No, this was a sleek cube, a safe with separate slots to deposit bills and coins, and a door secured by a digital combination.
He set it on the table near the chiming church, punched in the code (making no pretense to keep me from seeing it), and popped open the door. Out spilled some bills and the safe’s instructions.
He closed the door, slid the bills back in, and repeated this several times.
“Do you want to see the coins?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Until now, the paper money had covered the change. He tapped the code into the back-lit keypad, opened the door, and pulled out the bills. Underneath was a small pile of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
He looked up and smiled.
“Do you want to try it?”
“Sure.”
Holding on to a couple of bills, he returned the rest and closed the door. I slid the first bill into the slot, and the safe swallowed it. Likewise, the second.
I had been holding the instructions and experimented with feeding them into the bank.
“That won’t work,” he said. “That’s not the right kind of paper.”
He was right, of course.
The demonstration was over.
The scene replayed in my mind the next morning and I realized how special that exchange was. At its heart is our relationship. By letting me watch him work the safe, see his treasure, and even try it myself, he demonstrated the truth of his words, “I love you, Baba.”
This is just the way of our heavenly Father with us. He tells us He loves us and shows it by allowing us to work with Him.
Mark tells us in his gospel that Jesus selected twelve from the crowd of followers so that “they might be with Him and that He might send them out” (Mark 3:14).
He called them to watch and learn, then let them do what He was doing.
After several months of this, Jesus explained the process.
First, he said, “The Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel” (John 5:20).
Then, He ushers us into this experience.
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” (John 14:12).
Jesus involved His followers in the same way He and His Father work together. At its heart is the relationship and the love between them.
Working the safe with my grandson brought the words in the pages of scripture to life. And I experienced the deep meaning behind the simple line of the chorus, Jesus loves me, this I know.
My young man let me into his world because I am his grandfather, and we love each other. Sorry, but you won’t get to try his safe—he doesn’t know you.
So it is with our heavenly Father and why Jesus insisted, “You must be born again.” Without this relationship, the treasures of heaven are off-limits.
Many say they are children of God, but Jesus protested, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven… I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me.‘” (Matthew 7:21-23).
The missing bond is love.
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words” (John 14:23-24).
Were there no love between my grandson and me, I might never have known he had this gift, despite our relationship. But, loving me, he shared it and we had precious moments together. We enjoyed intimacy of the kind that the love of our heavenly Father opens: “We will come and make Our home with you.“
Yes, Jesus loves me…
I know this, not just because the Bible tells me so, but because He is at work, and calls me to do it with Him.
And that work?
“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” (John 6:29)