"I just want her to smell like flowers"

This is my co-worker, Christo. Today he bought some lotion for Maria, the little girl I wrote about below. He said, "I just want her to smell like flowers when she goes to school every day. Don't you think that is important to little girls?" Then he cried. Then we all cried - every single one of us.

"Jesus wept." - John 11:35

I wonder if God - when He sees our suffering - picks us up, dusts us off, and makes us smell like flowers, so to speak. For surely, even though Christo and we love Maria, God loves her even more. We are humans and our love is flawed, but God's love is perfect - it is deeper than we can fathom and knows no bounds, no matter what we have done or where we find ourselves.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:13