I was not expecting theology at a youth group snack table.
But there she was—sixteen, maybe seventeen—holding a plastic cup of lemonade, and she said it without any warning at all: “Jesus is my Pookie.” The room laughed. I laughed too. Then I looked at her face and went quiet, because she was not laughing. She was just standing there, completely at ease, like she had said the most obvious thing in the world.
I drove home thinking about her.
I have been a Christian long enough to have developed a certain kind of spiritual vocabulary. Sanctification. Sovereignty. The already and the not-yet. I know how to talk about God in ways that sound serious and earned. What I had quietly forgotten—somewhere under all those careful sentences and Sunday morning composure—was what it felt like to actually like Jesus. To miss Him when I had not talked to Him in a while. To want to be near Him not because it is good for me but just because.
That girl at the snack table still had it. I was not sure I did anymore.
Last winter, things got bad enough that my vocabulary failed me completely. A relationship I had held onto far too long finally ended, and I sat down on the bathroom floor—not the bed, not the couch, but the bathroom floor, which is where you end up when you have been holding yourself together all day and your legs just quietly stop cooperating. I did not pray for anything beautiful. I said something like, “I do not know how to do this. I genuinely do not.” And then I just stayed there for a while, on the cold tile, not moving, not even sure what I was waiting for.
What came was not a voice. It was not a vision. It was quieter than that and harder to explain—more like the feeling of someone sitting down next to you without making a production of it. Just sitting down. Just staying.
Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. I had read that verse probably a hundred times. That night on the bathroom floor, it stopped being a verse and started being a description of what was actually happening.
The thing about Jesus that I keep returning to—and I keep returning to it because it keeps surprising me—is how relentlessly physical His love was. He did not send messages. He did not delegate. He touched people. He sat at tables with the wrong crowd. He stopped walking mid-journey, surrounded by a pressing crowd, because one woman quietly reached for the hem of His robe and hoped nobody would notice (Luke 8:43–44). He noticed. He turned around. He always noticed the ones trying not to be seen.
That is the Jesus I need. Not a concept. Not a theological position I have staked out. The One who stops walking.
In John 15:15, He tells His disciples something almost uncomfortable in its intimacy: “I have called you friends.” Not followers. Not servants. Friends. The word implies a kind of mutual knowing—the sort where you do not have to explain your context before you start talking, where you can call at a bad hour, and where you can say something half-formed and trust the other person to understand what you actually mean underneath it all.
I think that is exactly what the girl with the lemonade was doing. She had found a word for Jesus that felt close enough to hold what she actually felt. It sounded funny to the room. It was completely true for her.
I have started to wonder if reverence does not always sound like reverence. Sometimes it sounds like a nickname. Sometimes it sounds like a grown woman on a bathroom floor saying, “I do not know how to do this,” to someone she trusts enough to fall apart in front of. Isaiah 43:1 says He calls us by name and says we are His—not by category or church attendance but by name—and that kind of love does not need a formal address. It just needs you to show up, whatever condition you’re in when you arrive.
Romans 5:8 says He loved us while we were still a mess. Not after we figured things out. While. I spent a long time believing, without quite realising I believed it, that I needed to be further along before I deserved to come close. That verse has quietly undone that lie more times than I can count.
Matthew 11:28 does not say, “Come to me when you are ready.” It says, “Come to me when you are weary. Come when you are burdened. Come exactly as you are right now, and I will give you rest.” That is not an invitation for the composed. That is an invitation for the bathroom-floor people. For the girl holding lemonade who just needed a word warm enough to carry what she meant.
I used to think faith matured by becoming more formal, more precise, and more careful with its language. I think now it might go the other direction—toward something simpler, more honest, less rehearsed. Toward what a child does before she learns to be careful: she just runs straight to the person she loves and does not think twice about it.
Jesus said that was exactly the idea (Mark 10:15).
I believe Him.
John Singarayar, a member of the Society of the Divine Word, India–Mumbai Province, holds a doctorate in anthropology. He is the author of several books and a regular contributor to academic conferences and publications. His work focuses on sociology, anthropology, theology, philosophy, ecology, artificial intelligence, leadership, management, tribal studies, spirituality, and mission.
