Category Archives: Children

Due Dates

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Today’s date, February 13, has been red-circled on my calendar for many months, because it’s our 6th grandbaby’s due date.

Of course Linnea is the key player in this big event, and the rest of us are taking our cue from her. She’s not counting on meeting the new baby today, based on the tardy arrivals of babies #1 and #2. But as with every labor and delivery since Eve gave birth to Cain, no one can be sure. Without the medical intervention of C-sections or inductions, due dates are merely ballpark figures. Even the most experienced obstetrician doesn’t have a clue what triggers labor.

Lots of other due dates chase us through life, too, sprinkled from birth to death, most with negative connotations. We have due dates for taxes, applications, bills, permits, assignments, and payments, each one dangling over us like a weight about to fall. Maybe that’s why a baby’s due date is special: it’s linked with great joy, and we’re eager for it to arrive.

God has a couple of other mysterious due dates, too: our death date, and the end of the age. Those three dates, birth, death, and Christ’s return, are secrets we’re not privy to, until God is ready to reveal them.

And that last one is especially critical, because no matter what birth and death dates we end up with, the day Jesus arrives on earth will be the only one of global import. When we meet him on that third date, whether sooner or later, the calendar number won’t matter as much as what we’ve done about him between dates one and two.

Meanwhile, God is patiently waiting for each of us to make preparations for that day. He wants us all to anticipate his coming with the same eagerness we feel in anticipating the birth of a baby. And God wants us all to be ready.

Linnea and Adam have done everything possible to prepare for their baby’s imminent arrival, whether it’s today or a week from today. Now it’s up to God. After all, he’s the one who holds the secret to the specific birth date.

And I have a feeling he’s going to let us in on that very soon.

“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come…” (2 Peter 3:8-10a)

 

By my own self!

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When our firstborn was a 20 month old toddler, his favorite sentence was, “By my own self!” That’s not really a sentence, since there’s no subject or verb, but we all knew the subject was “Nelson” and the verb was “do!” He desperately wanted to be independent.

Two weeks ago when I was in England visiting my 3 young grandchildren, the twins evidenced that same indomitable spirit at 22 months saying, “Own! Own! Own!”

I looked at their mommy and said, “What does that mean?”

“They want to do it ‘on their own’,” she said.

If I began peeling an orange for Evelyn, she’d reach for it and shout, “Own! Own!” Or with Thomas, I’d start to set up a train track and he’d say the same. “Own!”

Every child has their uniique way of communicating the same message: “Me have it!” or “I wanna do it!” or just plain “Nooo!”

As soon as children have minimal vocabulary, what they most want to say with it is, “I’m independent!” They’re letting us know they don’t want or need any help.

We laugh at that since most of the things they’re trying to do are beyond their toddler capabilities. But don’t we adults often communicate the very same message to God? We know he wants us to humble ourselves and come to him for help, but first choice is always to do it “by my own self.” When we finally admit we need him, our request still comes out wrong: “Lord, help me to do such and such.”

Instead it ought to be, “Do whatever you want, Lord, and I’ll follow.”

We live in a world that idolizes self-rule, which is one reason why following Jesus is so unpopular.  The backbone of Christianity is complete dependency on God, and the Bible’s steady drumbeat is, “Lose yourself in Christ’s sufficiency, and your life will have purpose.”

Making Christianity even less appealing to the masses, Scripture tells us our present life is only a training ground for life after death. We’re supposed to accept the old adage, “You can’t take it with you,” focusing away from earthly accumulation and toward heavenly treasure.

So how do we squelch the inner voice that begins talking to us at 20 months and never quits? How do we escape the natural human drive toward independence?

The only possible way is to admit that everything we do, have, or are belongs to God. That includes our homes and everything in them, our degrees, careers, accolades, investments, cars, our bodies and facial appearance, our health, our freedoms, even our children and grandchildren. All are God’s.

And once we acknowledge that, the rest comes easy, because if everything belongs to him, it’s only natural to follow his instructions on what to do with it all. As for doing anything “on our own” after that?

Not a chance.

“Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:25)

Rules of the Game

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Although Skylar and Micah are gone now, happy reminders of their visit are everywhere. At one point last week we brought out a bin of jumbled dominoes, some black, others brown, still others with colored dots, and one ivory-white set.

As I tried to teach her how to play authentic dominoes, she added her own creative flare to the game by filling in every available space between tiles. We ended up with less of a dotty road and more of a domino doormat. Showing her how to stand them up and watch them fall in succession was frustrating when her line kept falling ahead of schedule, so Skylar pursued her other ideas.

 

She transformed the dominoes into little houses, then into people who talked back and forth. She used them as blocks and also separated them into like categories. One morning I came downstairs to find she’d carefully placed the white dominoes atop the white piano keys. Who needs domino rules with so many other ways to play with them?

Many of us adults have a similar bent toward creative game-playing, although with us it might be interpreted as “ditch the rules and do it my way.” Sometimes we approach God like that, acknowledging his Rule Book and how he wants us to play the game of life but then making a case for personal creativity so we can side-step him. So, how much creativity is too much? Is there any wiggle room with God?

He gives us 66 books detailing how best to live our lives. Then he says, “You can do it in many specific ways, and each life will look different. Be creative! There’s just one condition: stay within my protective perimeters.”

It’s that last part that gets to us, producing streaks of rebellion we hope God will see as creativity. But when he says “don’t” he means, “Don’t hurt yourself by disobeying me.” Along with his don’ts, he usually says, “If you do it your way instead of mine, here’s what your self-wounding will look like.” But when our creative juices get flowing and our own ideas seem superior to his rules, we often can’t help ourselves.

Thankfully, though, natural consequences are an effective teacher. With enough self-inflicted pain, we eventually understand that God wrote the rule book the way he did for reasons that would benefit us.

As for Skylar, ultimately we had to put an end to her creativity. Using the dominoes like missiles was a no-go. Through natural consequences (the dominoes going back to the basement) she learned creativity can, indeed, go too far.

“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” (Galatians 6:4, The Message)