Roses

I'm Michelle, I want to take a little time and pray together with you. Well, I'm a Taloni so part of my heritage is Italian and we would have large family gatherings pre COVID and you know it take about 30 minutes to kiss everybody hello and hug everybody hello and you got one cheek kissers and two cheek kissers and you know when you're getting ready to leave, you've got to plan it out 30 minutes ahead of time. 'cause of all the goodbyes, right?

So David Nasser tells a story about being in Italy and he was sitting at this little Italian cafe when a big Italian family comes. Then he says you can tell who the Papa is, the patriarch 'cause he's the loudest, and he's telling everybody where to sit in Italian, you know a brand new italiano, but all I know is Manja. So that I know from going. Into Italy, but he had this beautiful little daughter sitting next to him. She was about 9 or 10 years old with long curly black hair sitting next to Papa and every time a new family member would come in and be like hey the whole restaurant new they arrived and the father would tell them where to sit and he was telling the waiter different things in Italian. And finally, this flower peddler comes in the guy with the bucket of roses that tries to guilt the guy into buying a rose for his date. Yep, he walks in.

He walks over to David's table and must have thought maybe David had a date in the restroom or something. But he's like no thank you. And then he goes to walk over to this big family and father season Papa season. From a long ways off and he just kind of motions, his hands like go away from here and then he looks down and he looks at his daughter. And his daughter is gazing at this bucket of roses and he looks down at his daughter and over at the flower peddler, and he jumps up out of his seat and runs across the restaurant hands a flower petal or a handful of money grabs the entire bucket full of roses picks him up out of the bucket, drips the water across the restaurant and puts them into the arms of his daughter.

So many roses that she can't even wrap her arms around them and he didn't wait to negotiate to think, oh I could buy that cheaper tomorrow at Costco, or bargain, or the flower peddler Those roses didn't mean anything to him till they saw what he meant to his daughter. It kind of sucked the atmosphere out of the room. Everybody noticed what happened, right? The flower peddler came over to offer the bucket and the little girl said no, and she just. Held that huge bundle of roses looking at the Rose is looking at her Papa looking at the roses, looking at her Papa.

David says that's what the grace of God is like. It's like a huge bundle of roses more than you can wrap your arms around given at a moment. So right that it floors you. His goodness, his mercy, follow you all the days of your life, my friend. His Grace truly is amazing.