Hope wanted to talk tonight, by Skype. We don’t do that very often. In fact, I think the last time we did she was talking about changing majors.

So I confess. As we waited for her evening class to finish and then her walk across campus to take her to her room, I wondered what she was going to tell us or ask us.

Nothing. And everything.

She told us what her weekend had been like. She told us what she’s learning. She gave us glimpses of her heart, of the things that she is excited about. There were no grand announcements, no defenses, no major changes.

She did a lot of the talking. We asked questions, made comments, laughed, teased. But for most of the 75 minutes she was talking. She did ask what was new here, and listened as we talked.

It was a conversation between a daughter and her parents, the kind of conversation that builds relationship by its very ordinariness. We will all go back to this conversation to mine insights.

After we talked and took forever saying goodbye, I looked in Psalms a little to find record of that kind of conversation between God and his kids. I didn’t find anything that was exactly like that. But I realized that I was looking in the wrong place, or perhaps for the wrong thing. After all, the kind of conversation we had with Hope doesn’t end up as the lyrics of a song. It is more likely to end up as a sentence: We had a nice chat.

I’m guessing that the best place to find something similar is not in the Psalms but in the gospels. In those places where Jesus goes off by himself and talks with his Father, about his days.

We can too.