Tying Together

There are two events this week which I want to tie together. The interweaving has been a treasure to me.

The first is lunch with one of my granddaughters. We have a LOT of grandchildren but then when you blend families that’s likely to happen. We have two groups: the Olders and the Youngers. There’s a good size age gap between them although the gap in behavior is less pronounced, which before anyone gets bent out of shape, is a reflection on some very old souls in the Youngers.

With the Youngers we rely on their parents to manage or help manage our relationship with each one. They are too young for cellphones or for even using their parents’ cellphones to contact us. But with the Olders we are able to establish relationships in a different way, including taking them to lunch. So the first event is lunch with one of the Olders. We have wide ranging conversations about all sorts of things including faith. At one point in the conversation, a statement I made caused her to pause: “God doesn’t have grandchildren.” She was kind of puzzled and wanted to know what I meant. I told her each of us has to come to our own relationship with God, we don’t inherit it from our parents. We might learn practices or disciplines of faith from them but ultimately we have to decide for ourselves and seek God on our own.

The second event is a familiar one. I ALWAYS have a stack of TBRs. To Be Read books. When I need something new to read, I first pursue that stack to see if something strikes my fancy. This week, I pulled Tyler Staton’s Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. I’m one chapter in and already have reaped so much for my soul. One highlighted passage (p. 24) reads: The most important discovery you will ever make is the Father’s love, and it’s just that – a discovery. It cannot be taught. It has to be discovered, and everything else flows from that discovery.

I’m gonna change it up just a very teeny bit: The most important discovery you will ever make is The Father’s love…

We all have earthly fathers. They come in all sorts of variations and flavors. Some of us have earthly fathers who we consider wonderful. I’m blessed to be in that category. Some of us, sadly, have earthly fathers who are so very far from wonderful. But regardless which view we have, there is a continuum from great to awful and I truly believe that no one father sits on one end or the other for every aspect of life. That means not a single one of them is perfect. And each of us at some point in time has disappointed our earthly father because, it turns out, we aren’t perfect either.

Our relationship with our earthly father can color our relationship with our Heavenly Father – with The Father. So discovering The Father’s love – His PERFECT love – for us truly is the most important discovery we will ever make.

I hope your relationship with your earthly father gives you a strong base camp to discover The Father’s love, Our Father’s love, for you. But even if that’s not true, you still have a discovery to make of a love which is so strong and so true, that nothing you can do or not do makes any impact on that love. God is NOT disappointed in you. Remember disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality. God deals in reality in a way we cannot understand. He is in the business of redeeming us, cleansing us, seeing us through the righteousness of His Son, Jesus.

Each of us. Individually. As His child.

Wow.