What We Learn about the Heart of God from a Formula Ad

It's been going around Facebook for about a week, an ad by the formula company Similac. The ad is brilliant. It shows a groups of parents arriving at the park, all in their categories: crunchy moms, stay at home dads, cloth diaperers, formula feeders, working moms, etc. A verbal battle ensues and they all prepare to throw down... As they do something unexpected happens. You can watch it here: 

And the Internet weeps at the beauty of various communities coming together to save one of their children. Well done, Similac. 

As with all things that touch such a common chord across humanity, the image speaks to a bigger truth, something that resonates in us and speaks to our souls. For me, when I watched this ad... I did not see a random neighborhood full of strangers; I saw the Church. I saw Christians standing and greeting each other, not with love and unity, but with bickering and competition. 

God uses his people to do his work, but when his people are shouting their own rightness, they often forget to care for those under their watch. They don't set the brake on the stroller, and the hearts they are entrusted with slowly start slipping down the hill of shame, doubt, confusion, and bitterness toward death in the lake of unbelief. 

But God is calling us, like the person who notices the stroller start to roll... He shouts a warning, begging us to cease bickering and hear. God's people are here to do his work; we have to stop that stroller... And we ought to all be running as fast as ours legs will carry us to grab the hand of God's wandering child, securing them in the grasp of a united community. 

image owned, I assume, by Similac

In the end, the parents at the park all rejoice together as the baby, now safe and warm, is reunited with her mother and declared to be safe. They do not return to their bickering, because they have faced crisis. They have seen firsthand that the tiny choices we make about temporal things just do not matter when we look into the eyes of eternity. So let us look through the lens of eternal grace at those around us, not labeling each other by denomination or belief or political leaning, but seeing every person as God's child and reach out to everyone, beyond petty disagreements over interpretation or application — let us reach out to each other, making everyone feel at home in the embrace of God's love.