Suffer the Little Children

It was with profound joy that I participated in my church's Thanksgiving service this week, as many of our folks were able to testify of God's rich blessings in their life. Repeatedly, we heard how faithful He had been, how He had answered prayers, how He Himself has secured for us redemption in Christ, who is our greatest treasure. Peculiar among the testimonies, however, were those of two of our younger couples.

They both shared how it was not in their plans to (ever) have kids, since it brought on certain financial difficulties, inhibited freedom, etc. These testimonies were very poignant and honest, and they resonated with me since I was of that mindset not too long ago.

My wife and I are, as you can see, blessed with one of the most precious baby girls in all the world, and yet at the prospect of having her, I first recoiled. Leigh, my wife, was anxious to have a child within only a year of our marrying, and I still had so much more I wanted to do and accomplish before I was burdened with a little crying mouth to feed.

It took me quite a while to recognize my inherent selfishness in these motives. And, while I've yet to accomplish (fully) some of those things I wished to do, and Leigh and I have to be careful not to allow our daughter, Kristine, to distract us from one another, I have not been inhibited in any noticeable way by having our firstborn. In fact, the world has only opened up in far greater magnitude than it ever revealed itself to me before.

Certainly, if we are called to singleness, we are to follow that route with an unflagging pursuit of God's glory in our lives. If we are married, we are to do the same, and one of the primary means of doing that is raising up (many) godly children that are discipled well, and prepared to advance the Gospel in innumerable ways. To do anything less is to betray simple biology, and to diminish one of the gifts God intended sex for (though it is certainly a gift in itself).

If I'd known then what I know now, perhaps we'd have two kids by now. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for God's patience (and my wife's). While marriage certainly pushes me beyond living only for myself, which is the chief of sins, fatherhood only does more so.

Praise be to God!

"The Box"

My wife and I had the rare opportunity tonight to go on a date, and it was our intention to see The Blind Side together. However, since they couldn't seat us together, and the last time I checked, a date required such arrangements, we decided to give The Box a chance.

Based upon Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button," The Box raises the question of what fateful consequences await the choices we make. What a tangled web we weave, it seems, when we make personal decisions that "won't harm anybody" (at least, anybody we know, in this scenario). Some may call it "karma," others "reaping what you sow." I call it simply "reality." Every cause has an effect, and the underlying ethics of our decisions are inescapable, however well we might justify them or rationalize them away.

This "reality" holds true for believer and nonbeliever alike. "All have sinned," certainly, and so it goes without saying that the consequences for those who do not believe in Christ are dire. However, I know so many presumed "Christians" who think that because they have "confessed with their mouth (though not with their lives) that 'Jesus is Lord,' that they are somehow immune to the consequences of their actions. They persist in "respectable sins" like jealousy, pride, and lust, thinking somehow that they "won't harm anybody," except, of course, the holy God who, it had seemed, had freed them from such vices.

Though the movie left us relatively unsatisfied, it did allow us the occasion to share Christ with the one other couple in the theater. The woman we spoke with evidenced a very similar thought pattern to these professing Christians, in that she was staking her soul upon "what worked for her," when the universe evidences that we, in fact, are not in charge. My prayer for her, and the "christians" like her, is that He will open their eyes to their need of Him, and His prerogatives, which far outweigh their own in wisdom, benefit, joy, and every other desirous category.

I'm no Liberal, but....

I suppose it's no big surprise that abortion has taken the fore in the ongoing health care debate. It's been a hot button issue since Roe v. Wade. Since that time, Christians have been relatively outspoken about the ills of abortion, and have even become embroiled in the politics of it all. While the effectiveness of this can be debated, I do think it worth our while to consider our role.

For one, we would do well to examine the historic stance of the Church on this issue. Abortion is certainly nothing new, and the Roman culture surrounding the early church is no exception. In fact, even infanticide was a common practice, but you don't see Peter and Paul petitioning the Roman courts to outlaw it. Instead, Christian families were adopting these unwanted children (typically girls). They provided a loving outlet for those families who could not, or would not, care for their own children (See Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity). We would do well to do the same. It rings of hypocrisy when we lament mothers who don't want their children, when we don't provide them an outlet for their care.

Remember, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27). May we show ourselves to be such people.