I began, “Knock-knock” 

She asked with a little prompting, “ Who’s There?”

I replied, “Lettuce”. Then prepared to follow up with a funny punch line.

But instead of asking the question, “Lettuce Who?”, Abbey proudly answered me instead with, “ Let us love one another.”

Boom…! Totally awesome come back!

And while it wasn’t in line with the classic punchline of a knock-knock joke, it sure did have me laughing out loud. 

That moment made me so proud of my girl! She had listened to the words I was speaking, and as often happens with people with autism she had associated those words with something she was super familiar with. The amazing thing was that the first thing she associated the word “lettuce” with was not her favorite fixation of In n Out hamburgers with extra lettuce and tomato, as would’ve been expected. It was a bible verse. 1 John 4:7a, “Beloved let us love one another”. This verse was clearly at the forefront of her mind. 

That cute little encounter with my daughter left me thinking. Is this verse at the forefront of my mind like it is hers? Is it at the forefront of anyone’s mind lately? It seems that we are all at odds with one another. At least that’s the story that is often told on the news and our social media platforms. Sadly, there is some truth to it. I don’t think anyone can deny that when you find yourself talking to someone lately you also find yourself carefully gauging when, where, and how much to say about anything at all. Everything just seems so controversial. 

So here’s a wonderfully simple solution to consider – Love. God’s love always wins. It’s why He asks us to share it with one another. The beautiful gift of my daughter’s Autism is that she can clearly see this. Her answer came from more than a simple word association. She lives to show God’s love to others. She is the girl who once said, “I’m gonna go to Costco and make 4 friends”. And no that definitely doesn’t mean that loving others is always easy or that we will agree on everything with everyone. In fact, we won’t and sometimes flat out shouldn’t, but if we can simply operate out of the love that we have been given, so much could change in and around us. 

What an awesome challenge and one well worth pressing into in these chaotic and highly charged days. 

“We love because He first loved us.” 

1 John 4:19