Author: admin

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22–23

Our daughter likes variety. She wants something new every ten minutes.

My wife is extremely patient with our daughter’s impatience.

Tonight, my wife — who was suffering from a day-long headache — offered to braid our daughter’s hair.

She refused. “No!”

“Mama does so many things you ask her to do,” I told her. “You won’t let her do this one thing?”

She relented.

To the surprise of neither me nor my wife, our daughter loved the results. She demanded a photoshoot.

Her refusal to accept this gift — and then being so pleased with it she wanted to celebrate it — reminded me of the way we treat God’s mercy and grace.

Mercy is the opposite of grace. Mercy is when we don’t get what we deserve. Grace is when we get what we don’t deserve.

Given her attitude, our daughter deserved a quick trip to the bathtub and her bed.

In her mercy, my wife withheld punishment. With grace, my wife gave her a beautiful hairdo.

I am in awe of my wife’s patience with our daughter. I am even more in awe of God’s mercy towards and faithfulness to me.

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” Isaiah 40:8

My wife brought some of her parents’ camellias to our house, and this morning there were fresh petals on the floor.

In the ten minutes between getting up and getting in the car to go to school, my daughter found them and adopted them.

We put them in a plastic container, and she held them all the way to school. She typically brings in a stuffed animal for the school day. Today, she chose the container of camellia petals over the stuffed jaguar.

When I picked her up from school, she was looking at the petals with her beset friend.

It was on the way home that the hammer dropped. She noticed the petals were getting black.

“My petals are dying!” she cried.

We explained the biology of plants. The petals had been dead this morning. It was a blessing that they had managed to last for the day.

She wasn’t having any of it.

We handed her kleenux, and it ended there.

Her brief but torrid relationship with these petals is a preview of coming attractions. Truly does the grass wither and the flower fall.

I will hold onto this day as an illustration for her when I want contrast created reality with the Creator. God — and God’s word — will never pass away. That certainly gives me comfort.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13–15

Today, my daughter asked me if she could go over to a friend’s house “when COVID’s over.” I said, “Of course!”

Thankfully, she didn’t ask when that would be. If she had, she wouldn’t have gotten the response, “I don’t know.”

This is what the pandemic has given us: less certainty than ever before in a culture that takes certainty as a given.

My heart went out to my daughter. Going over to a friend’s house is such a small thing. I’m not sure it will happen with this particular friend given her distance from us and the rapidly approaching date of our daughter’s preschool graduation.

Life is precious. I don’t want to take any of the small graces God has given me for granted.

My daughter’s request is one such grace. I’m glad she has a friend she’d like to hang out with outside school. That’s a good thing. I thank God for every good thing He gives, and I pray for a spirit that is more attuned to His will, one that not only takes Him into consideration but begins with Him.

So, the next time my daughter asks if she can to her friend’s house “when COVID’s over,” she’ll get the response, “Lord willing, sweetheart. Lord willing.”

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:12–13

For my fortieth birthday, my wife asked a bunch of people in my life to write me letters. I will treasure them for the rest of my life. They are a humbling collection indeed.

One that particularly moved me came from my sister-in-law. In its final paragraph she talked about how thankful she was that my wife and I had brought our daughter into the world (a sentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly).

The daughter of my brother and sister-in-law is nine months older than our daughter, but the two of them are thick as thieves and enjoy getting to see each other any time they can.

My sister-in-law wrote that if our daughter ever felt blue, she need only be reminded that she’s her cousin’s favorite person. I read the sentence to my wife and started crying.

This kind of grace — my daughter’s a decent kid, but it’s not like she’s earned her cousin’s undying affection — is a picture of what we receive in God’s family. My niece doesn’t need any more reason to love our daughter than that their cousins.

It is sometimes miraculous to me that I’m related to the people I’m related to. I have two remarkable brothers, a remarkable mom and dad, who were themselves the children of remarkable parents. I’ve never met anyone in the world like some of my aunts and uncles. The only reason I know people like them is because I’m related to them!

Family is a gift from God, and being a part of God’s family is an even greater gift. I am appreciative of my sister-in-law — and many others — giving me the chance to reflect on that gift.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4

Our daughter went to the dentist today, if you were wondering about the verse above. She was scared. I was scared about her being scared. Unlike her last couple of time going to the dentist, I was the parent on dental duty this afternoon.

The rod and staff comforting our daughter? Her trusty teddy bear Amandine.

Our daughter received the bear as a gift from a neighbor in Pendleton, and it’s been her nighttime companion, school compatriot, and now dental co-conspirator.

All told, the visit took twenty minutes.

While our daughter squirmed and squeezed Amandine pretty tightly, she remained in a good mood and endured the teeth cleaning and fluoride application that made up today’s visit.

Dentists are a blessing from God.

Good visits to the dentist are an even bigger blessing from God.

Teddy bears? I wouldn’t call them the biggest blessing, but they certainly supply — and remind us of God’s — comfort.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Romans 7:15

When my daughter is misbehaving— like she had today — she’ll often say, “I can’t help it!”

From a five-year-old, that’s difficult to argue with. You can imagine the exchange.

“Yes, you can!”

“No, I can’t!”

We can certainly make individual interventions. Today, she was upset about how her coloring was going. When we told her to calm down, she told us she couldn’t. My wife wisely pointed out that our daughter managed to keep her emotions in check when coloring at school. We had never heard her teachers say that she couldn’t calm down when coloring. That kept her quiet for a while.

The thing that struck me as I reflected on this dilemma today is that my daughter has a theological point in saying she can’t help it, although it’s one that she probably doesn’t realize.

What she’s testifying to is that she needs God’s help if she’s going to control her emotions. It’s not something she’s going to be able to do on her own…and least not for the right reason. She may be able to keep quiet if she thinks it will cost her cartoons that afternoon or dessert that evening, but she won’t know how and why losing her mind over a colored picture of a dog is unwise.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul talks about the feeling of wanting to do the right thing and not being able to do it. He says it’s hard to understand what he’s doing.

I feel that way sometimes with my parenting. Even as I thought about our daughter’s claim that she couldn’t help acting up, I wondered what my excuse was when I was impatient with or dismissive of her.

At least I know that I can’t do it myself. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to be the kind of parent I need to be. If saying “I can’t help it” is a way of acknowledging my need for God’s help, then it’s worth admitting.

“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.” Revelation 19:1

Every morning on the way to school, our daughter and I listen to this song by the CCM band Earthsuit.

It’s a weird song, but its imagery comes from Revelation.

This week, I’ve gotten our daughter into another Earthsuit song called “One Time.” Its lyrics are less overtly biblical, though it does feature the request, “Father, come and fill us!”

Jesus Music can be and should be good. I’m glad my daughter digs it.

“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, ‘Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.’” Matthew 8:10

Today, our daughter came home from school with a book she made. Its subject was the Roman Centurion (who she kept calling the “ancient Romer”) who asked Jesus to heal his servant.

Our daughter was immensely proud of the book.

“Do you like it?” she asked on the way home.

“Do you think momma will like it?” she continued.

When she was reminded that we were going to her grandparents for dinner, she made up her mind to bring the book.

“Do you think Granny and Grandpa will like it?” she asked.

The book consisted of five pages with pictures and short captions. Our daughter had colored the servant, the Centurion, and Jesus on each page.

“Does it look realistic?” she asked.

Frankly, I was more interested in learning what she knew about the story.

“The ancient Romer asked Jesus to heal his servant. He had faith,” she responded.

“What’s faith?” I asked.

“Faith is when you believe in Jesus even though you can’t see Him,” she said.

That wasn’t a bad definition.

“What about the Centurion?” I asked. “He could see Jesus. What was his faith?”

This one stumped her.

“The Centurion believed Jesus could heal the servant without going to the servant,” I tried to explain. “Jesus healed a man he couldn’t see…and this because the Centurion believed Jesus had that power!”

She was silent.

“Do you have faith in Jesus?” I asked.

“Sometimes at night,” she answered, “when I can’t go to sleep, I pray to Jesus. I have faith in Him, and He helps me go to sleep.”

What do you say to that?

I myself had experienced a fitful night of sleep and had asked God in the middle of the night for help in getting some rest.

All I could get out was, “That’s great, sweetheart!”

We may not be exercising Centurion-level faith, but we are believing in the same Jesus as the “ancient Romer.” And I do have faith that our daughter will place her ultimate trust in Christ for her salvation.

I’m gonna like that a lot.

“For we live by faith, not by sight.” II Corinthians 5:7

At school, my daughter practices what she calls “sight words”: “the,” “me,” “I,” and “like.”

The irony is that they should be “faith words.”

She’s supposed to know these words on sight because they’re used in English so frequently, but she has to take it on faith that the words are pronounced the way the teacher says.

In contrast to words such as “dog” or “pet” or “cat,” she won’t be able to sound out the word “like.” She’ll have to believe that in certain words the letter “e” is silent.

In truth, there are a good deal more things she’ll have to take on faith.

As I type this, she’s having a fit because she doesn’t want to sleep.

(The irony here is that the fit she’s having is a testimony to her need for sleep.)

I can’t prove to a five-year-old that sleep matters. She doesn’t know what to make of scientific studies. I’ll have to rely on emotional arguments, and at some point, she’ll just have to believe me.

We tell ourselves that our sense experiences are the realest things to us, that seeing is believing.

But more often than not, we have to take people’s words on things.

Paul’s admonition that we should live by faith testifies to how thoroughly our belief in God (the unseen One who made everything we see) should inform our lives.

I want to live a life that models this kind of faith for my daughter and my wife. That’s hard to do, and I’ll need all the practice I can get. Maybe my daughter’s school has the right idea.