Cupcakes

Ten years young. A whole life ahead. Future. Promise. Hope. Optimism.

When I was ten, back in Franklin, Tennessee, ten was riding a bike, playing neighborhood football,  eating popsicles and playing in tree houses. Ten doesn’t have worries. Ten doesn’t feel stress. Ten isn’t defeated by obstacles. It doesn’t get much better than ten.

Unless you lost your Mom at two. Ten doesn’t sound like so much fun any more. Especially if your Mom was a victim to your Dad’s anger. A fit of rage. I don’t want to be that ten. That’s Billy’s ten.

Grandmother was God’s act of mercy. Thank God for grandmothers.

Grandmother is the one that will love Billy. Grandmother is the one that will provide a home, change the diapers, prepare the food, raise Billy. And Grandmother is as good as any mother.

It was grandmother who brought cupcakes for Billy’s classmates to celebrate his tenth birthday. Most parents don’t do that. And it was grandmother who was told she couldn’t bring those cupcakes in to school. Policy. You have to love policy…

All of us have experienced times when policy just needed to be overruled. Jesus was the ultimate at knowing when to overrule policy. “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?" Yeah...Jesus was the master at many things...and one of them was knowing when policy needed to go in the garbage.

Sometimes we can’t see past policy. Sometimes we see through the lens of our minds, not our hearts. Jesus taught us how to see with our hearts.

The principal walks in. He has been oblivious to what transpired. He finds out Billy’s grandmother brought cupcakes. He finds out she was asked to leave. It’s policy. Most guys would go on about their business. After all...it’s policy.

Policy wasn’t going to win today. Not in Billy’s story. The principal drives to the store, buys cupcakes out of his pocket, and delivers them to Billy’s class. He trumped policy. He pulled the ox out of the well. He did what Jesus would have done. He loved a child over his power to enforce policy, even when it cost him.

What a place the world would be if the prerequisite for power was...LOVE.