Me And Nanny Mcphee

Me and Nanny McPhee

I felt someone looking over my shoulder. I was in Barnes & Noble late on a weekday afternoon, reading a book I was thinking of buying. (Yes, I do that.) I was also trying to ignore the small lurker nearby, imagining that she was only interested in the book in my lap. Then her young voice asked, “What’s that?” I ignored the girl at first, thinking she was speaking to someone else. She wasn’t. She was speaking to me and gesturing. “It’s a book,” I said, confused.

“No,” she answered, pointing at my face now. “What’s that?” I wondered if I’d marked on myself with a pen when she said, “On your cheek.”

Well. There is a mole on my left cheek. I’ve always had it. I don’t even notice it anymore. But she did. Geesh.

“It’s a mole,” I said, now feeling the furtive stares of the shoppers nearby. And I began to feel a little freakish. I’d never considered the mole a glaring defect or a cosmetic flaw, but this child surely did. “A what?” she asked again. “A mole,” I repeated, now wishing to drop through the floor. Whose kid was this?

I felt bad for the rest of the day. Like there was something grotesquely wrong with me. And there is. But it’s not a mole. It’s not anything external at all. My heart is flawed and more than a little sick. I was born that way. Yet in spite of my flaws I have been loved with an everlasting love. My God, who could easily (and with pinpoint accuracy) name my every defect, instead chooses to see in me his only Son’s righteousness. I am robed in it. Covered by it. He does not see my sin sickness any longer. He sees goodness, truth, and beauty, while I see mostly Nanny McPhee.

So if you were to point to me and ask, “What’s that?”—I would hope with all my heart you were seeing Jesus. He’s the lovelier of the two of us, by far.

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God.

1 John 3:1, NASB