Grandchildren

Monday, January 11, 2016

Day 11, Step 4: Grandchildren

They’ll rebuild the old ruins,    raise a new city out of the wreckage.
They’ll start over on the ruined cities,    take the rubble left behind and make it new. (Isaiah 61:3-4 MSG)

Lofty, strong and magnificent, distinguished for uprightness, justice and right standing with God. The planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. (AMP)

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. (Galatians 3:28 MSG)

You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance. (Galatians 4:6-7 MSG)

On a news channel reporting on the international summit on climate change, I heard someone say something to this effect: 

“We are the first generation to recognize the significance of global climate change. We are the last generation able to do something about it.”

He was young enough to be our grandchild.

In these readings, God set the groundwork many generations ago. Isaiah the prophet had a wife, and since the Scripture does not say otherwise, I suspect he had children and grandchildren. God told us over and over from the time of Isaiah, a prophet of Judah in the 8^th century BC, and I know biblically long before that, clear back to Noah and even Adam, we would keep leaving a mess for our children and grandchildren to clean up.

However, we are always asked if we left them the tools, the inheritance they need to do the job their generation must do?

Paul, the apostle, tells us over and over God has no grandchildren. Each generation we stand only one generation from the extinction of Christianity. Do we live a life that will call our children and grandchildren to believe?

Have we taught them love is unconditional, so they will recognize it in Jesus, and give it to others? Have we apologized, so they know, we know, we too, are not perfect? However, we know perfection as have those who went before us? 

Have we called them who they are:

·        

                                                                                      ELAN: strong oak, great light, the essence of life

     

                                                     GEORGE: guardian of the soil

      DAVIS: sons of David the King,

·         
       

                                                                            MEREDITH: protector of the sea,

·                                                                                  ANN: grace, love, 

·        
         All, home grown and collected:  sons and daughters of the God of creation and salvation?

Have we taught them everything they need to know about staying connected to us, to their parents, their siblings, their cousins, because that is where they can always draw strength to live and to do?

Do we make it possible for them to see us caring for elderly parents, so they will know how to care for theirs when the time comes? Do they see us supporting their parents, so they can learn how to help their children? Do they see us loving, caring and serving?

No answers, just questions. Have we prepared them to be a generation that recognizes the needs of creation and the created? Have we prepared them to be the ones who will do something to preserve and defend?

Baby step four:

• ·        Live and love where our grandchildren can see the good
•       Tell our grandchildren stories 
•       Invite our grandchildren to be a part of a bigger story.

What do your grandchildren need to know? What have you taught them? Tell us because our grandchildren need to know, too.

Be Still My Soul

I remember many a Sunday morning when our children were young that getting everyone ready and headed for church was such a harrowing experience that by the time I arrived, I wondered why I had even bothered. I was so frazzled, so discombobulated, I couldn’t even focus enough to worship.

I wonder if I had made a practice of singing Psalms of Ascent, or even made a practice of preparing the night before, I could have helped the whole family focus on the power, protection, security, and mercy found only in God.

I wonder if it I might have found a moment to see eye-to-eye with God. To center myself in the place where God receives me just as I am. Maybe I should have gone to bed sooner so I could rise and pray, not that God would still be there when I got there, but that I perceived God’s presence from the moment I woke.

Could I have made a way to live in such a manner that I was aware of God’s presence in the search for a hair brush, the finding of two socks that matched, trying to get everyone to the table so I would have time to dress? Could I have breathed deeply into a place of quiet trust that we would get there on time in spite of me?

Was there a moment when I was trying to get toothpaste onto every toothbrush that I could have calmed and quieted my soul. I wonder if God was struggling to get my attention when all I could focus on was getting coats and hats and where are those mittens, they are supposed to be in the sleeves of your coat.

Now, because of my suppressed immune system, I have quiet Sunday mornings where I go to church by myself on my computer. No getting out in the cold or among crowds of people. I can even stay in my pajamas, wrapped in a blanket of God’s love – God-bound, not home-bound.

I miss those hectic mornings, although I’m not sure I would want to relive them unless I could change them. After all, that is what God wants. He wants to change not the mornings, really, but to change my heart. For he searches my mind and my heart and encourages me to hold on to what I have until he comes.

Then again, Jesus didn’t rush to get to the temple. He stopped at the Sheep Gate - the gate through which the shepherds brought the sacrificial lambs. The shepherds were never “clean” enough to enter the temple. Near that gate gathered the ill and the infirm hoping to be the first to make their way, or to find someone to throw them into the healing waters. Jesus didn’t rush by, or slow down, he stopped.

Stillness in his presence is as much of a gift these days, as are the memories of those mornings when getting my family to church was more important than if I got there at all.