Sunday afternoon I was at the beach catching up on my reading when a family of four walked over the dune. The boy (about 7) and girl (about 5) were dressed for sand-play and got busy immediately. Without buckets or shovels they used their hands to begin carving out a pond next to the shallow creek, excitedly conversing about their project.

But Daddy had brought a ball and two mitts, one for him and one for his boy. “C’mon!” he coaxed, with pep in his voice. “Let’s play some ball!”

His son, deep into digging, wasn’t interested. So his daddy began tossing the ball high in the air, catching it himself, calling again and again for his builder-boy to join him, but he repeatedly answered, “I don’t want to, Daddy.”

Peeking over my book to watch what would happen, I created several scenarios in my mind:

• Maybe the dad was busy all week, unable to find father-son play time, and this was it.
• Perhaps he’d recently enrolled his boy in Pee Wee Baseball and hoped to coach him that afternoon.
• Or was he a controller, fathering according to a strict schedule that included baseball that day?

Would this father patiently wait for his son? Would he insist he play ball? Would he leave the beach in a huff?

Suddenly the boy initiated his own call. “Hey, Daddy! Come and make this pond with us. We need your help!”

His daddy set aside his ball and mitts and moved into his children’s project, showing them how to use driftwood as shovels, adding a side canal, and praising their work. When the pond was “complete”, his son was ready for baseball, and the two of them played with gusto.

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Scripture is generously sprinkled with references to fatherhood, and we all have (or at least had) a father. God uses father-metaphors to teach men how to lead their families, love their wives, discipline their children, and show tolerance toward others. But on the flip side of that instruction is his invitation to all of us, men and women alike, to call him Father. He wants to lead, love, discipline, and yes, show tolerance to us when we disappoint him.

Our heavenly Father wants us to embrace an intimate relationship with him that resembles the father-son joy I saw on the beach last Sunday. That was some good fathering, which is exactly what God offers to us.

BTW, before that family left the beach, the little boy had constructed an obstacle course…..

…..through which he challenged his daddy to try skipping stones without hitting the sticks. It turned out to be more fun than pond-making, better than baseball, and a great demonstration of the warm connection God the Father wants to have with every one of us.

“May…. God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

Life is full of new beginnings, which usually means the ending of something else. This week baby Emerald ended her night-time partnership with a bassinet and began sleeping in a larger bed.

Birgitta chose a Pack ‘n Play over a traditional crib for now, and Emerald is appreciating its soft sides. The first night in her new bed we heard her fingers scraping at the netting, exploring her new surroundings with curiosity.

Babies probably experience more endings/beginnings in the first year of their lives than they will in any other year, and they usually do it with eagerness. It seems as soon as Emerald gets used to something (like her Bumbo seat), she’s nearly done with it. This week she’s practicing sitting on her own and when placed in the Bumbo squirms left and right to get out of it.

But babies aren’t the only ones coping with continual change. The rest of us are there, too, not always as quick to flex as the little ones. When we age, we seem to love non-change more and more, or maybe it’s just me. I think it’s generally difficult to make frequent adjustments to “the way it is,” once we’re in the autumn of our lives.

But I’ve been watching other people in my age bracket and beyond, looking to see if any of them exhibit flexibility and a willingness to embrace change. Amazingly, a few do it with ease, even with flair, all the way through their 80’s and 90’s. How do they do that?

Scripture insists we can stay “fresh and green” until the end of our lives (Psalm 92:14), remaining productive for God, others, and ourselves. In looking at that Psalm, I learned exactly how this can be done:

• By acting righteously
• By willingly planting ourselves in the house of the Lord
• By testifying to God’s righteousness

I found the same thing in one of the Proverbs: “The righteous will thrive like a green leaf.” (11:28)

Such a promise then begs the question, so how do we get righteous? Psalm 1 lets us know: we’re to take delight in God’s law, thinking about it during the day and also during the night. If we do that, it says, everything else we do will prosper.

Everything!

That’s quite a promise. And along that same vein, Jeremiah tells us that if we put our confidence in God and trust him no matter how disastrous our circumstances, we’ll always be like a well-rooted tree whose leaves are continually green, “never failing to bear fruit.” (17:7-8)

Never!

And if all that is true, old age can be all kinds of fun! Embracing new beginnings without stressing over old endings will be as easy as….

….well, as easy as it is for little Emerald.

“The righteous… will still bear fruit in old age; they will stay fresh and green.” (Psalm 92:14)

This weekend my long-term girlfriend-club gathered in Michigan for our bi-annual hiatus from real life. In decades past, the M&Ms met monthly in the Chicago suburbs, but in the last 5 years it’s become more difficult to find monthly dates that would work with busy schedules.

We finally settled on two “retreats” each year, both in Michigan. That’s a boon for me, since the rest of them still live in Illinois. But they willingly bear the expense and commitment of a 200 mile round trip in order to spend 24 hours together twice a year.

Sometimes we find a quiet place to have a prayer time, but whether or not that happens, increasingly we end up talking on spiritual topics. That’s because our personal commitments to Christ are the glue that has held us together all these years, and that same glue promises to bind us throughout eternity.

In any given year we don’t get to spend much time together, what with diverse travel schedules, grandmothering responsibilities, active careers, and volunteer hours, but nothing can take away the sense of togetherness we share that’s outside of time and space. That’s made possible by our God who lives outside of those realms and sometimes invites us to join him there. For example, in prayer.

Figuratively, the M&Ms meet in the Lord’s throne room whenever we approach him in conversation, and if the requests we bring are about each other, we like to think of ourselves as being in there together, with him and with each other.

A man named John Fawcett said it well in a hymn:

Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love;

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above.

The M&M women have a “fellowship of kindred minds.” The word “fellowship” means shared mutual interests and experiences in relationships of trust. “Kindred” refers to a person’s family or relatives collectively, and the 7 of us certainly do feel like family members who can be trusted. So… “the fellowship of kindred minds” describes what the M&Ms have. As the old hymn says, the tie that binds our hearts is Christian love.

All of this may sound weighty and overly religious, but lest you think there was any halo-polishing in my Michigan cottage this weekend, know that we also played the word-game “Catch Phrase” from 10:00 pm until 1:20 am, laughing ourselves into laryngitis and bellyaches. Though our minds are tied together in Christ, those same minds can also get good-and-goofy, too.

“God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord… that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.” (1 Corinthians 1:9-10)