There is a young girl at my church who warrants special mention. She is proof, to me, that we are all God’s children. She walks with difficulty and speaks with equally labored effort: Dickens would have likened her to Tiny Tim, of that I am sure. She is a wonderful person, though fate has given her challenges that most people do not face. Her name is Hannah, and today, she gave me a hug.<\/p>\n
I don’t know exactly what I did to deserve it, but before I could get out of my pew at the end of the services today, Hannah was there and she flung her arms around my neck. She said nothing, just smiled, and I couldn’t hold back the tears. Anger wears down the heart while laughter revs it up: it’s tears, though, that lubricate and maintain the heart. I had me a good, strong, happy sort of cry while Hannah gave me that hug.<\/p>\n
She has a lot of hardships, but she sees beyond them – if she sees them at all. And though she struggled to make her way down the aisle to give me the hug I did not expect, she gave freely of what she had to give. She gave a smile and she gave a piece of her heart.<\/p>\n
I felt charity with that hug, I truly did. The pure love of God was in that hug, and none can tell me otherwise. I don’t know if it was with a purpose to reassure me for a loss or prepare me for a trial… or if it was simply a wonderful child that needed to share the joy she felt by hugging someone. I don’t know, but I accepted that hug gladly and with humility. <\/p>\n
Her hug gives me hope. Thank you very much, Hannah. God bless us, every one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a young girl at my church who warrants special mention. She is proof, to me, that we are all God’s children. She walks with difficulty and speaks with equally labored effort: Dickens would have likened her to Tiny Tim, of that I am sure. She is a wonderful person, though fate has given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}