Monthly Archives: January 2012

A Grand Opportunity

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Scripture is dotted with verses expressing the intensity of God’s love for people. And he has a special love relationship with those who follow him wholeheartedly and do their best to obey his commands.

Although I would never claim to understand the depth of his love for me, this week I’m getting a taste of intense love in the company of young Nicholas, Evelyn and Thomas, my 3 little British grands. The 4 of us recently spent a day with their other grandma, “Dandy”, playing together while their mummy took some much needed time for other things.

Our well-oiled grannie machine, Team Gran UK, operated at full power as we trucked the children here and there on a cold rainy day and whiled away the afternoon playing childish games in front of a parlor fire at Dandy’s house. While our little darlings played, we grandmas talked about the intensity of love we feel for our shared grands, different than mother-love and in a sense larger, because we’re allowed to be less taken with the here-and-now and more focused on the big picture.

God’s love is larger still, though. After all, he says it’s “as great as the height of the heavens.” (Psalm 103) His love is vast, larger than any of us can possibly experience, but maybe through grandchild-loving he does let us get a glimpse of it.

There is one other radical difference between God and us in terms of loving grandchildren: he doesn’t have any.

Each person who puts their trust in the Lord is reborn directly to him. He’s their Father, and Jesus is their brother. Christianity doesn’t filter through the generations by heredity, nor does it get passed along by family tradition. It doesn’t get watered down as oral history might, and it doesn’t become contaminated by over-use. Each conversion experience is brand-spankin’ new and pure, on its own.

I’m puzzled, however, by a couple of verses in the same Psalm that refer to spiritual grandchildren: “The love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments.” (vv. 17-18)

Children’s children? Aren’t those grandchildren? What does he mean?

Maybe he’s highlighting the precious privilege we grandparents have to model godliness for our grandchildren and to faithfully pray for them. Though our lives will eventually blow away like dust on a blustery day, our positive influence can continue through generations. In other words, nurturing our grands today can actually affect future relatives we’ll never meet.

And that puts a whole new light on Team Gran playing childish games with children in front of a warm fire on a cold winter day.

“He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands.” (Deuteronomy 7:9)

A Happy Conundrum

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When Christmastime rolled around, all of Nate’s and my children were under my Michigan roof… except one. Hans and his British family were far away in England where they live, and we missed them dearly. With four thousand miles and an ocean between us, bridging the gap this year wasn’t possible.

My encouragement through the holidays was to know there was an empty seat on a plane to Great Britain waiting for me on January 17. Nicholas, age 3, and twins Evelyn and Thomas, 21 months, were looking for their Grandma MeeMee, and I was anxious to get reacquainted, since it’d been nearly a year since we’d been together.

Leaving Michigan on Tuesday and arriving in Manchester, England on Wednesday, I was concerned about the fatigue of jet lag, but that turned out to be wasted worry. This time there didn’t seem to be any, an astonishing surprise. (Thank you, Lord.)

Nicholas remembered his American grandma well, and the twins (who didn’t) had learned to walk and talk during our separation, all of which facilitated better communication.

Most delightful was listening to toddler British accents: “Oh dear!” was “Oh dee-ah!” and “No more” was “Nay moh.” Despite Hans’ strong American pronunciation, the 3 children speak distinctly British.

Katy has done a great job keeping American traditions alive with celebrations of the 4th of July and Thanksgiving, and I arrived to hand-made stars-and-stripes bunting strung in their living room. She’s also teaching them to enjoy Twizzlers, peanut butter and Nerds, distinctly American flavors, and they all visit the US as often as possible.

Sometimes when I’m in the States and they’re in England, it’s distressing to ponder the great distance between us, and it’s then I zero in on 4 things:

  1. Nate and I agreed we’d always let our kids manage their own adult lives, following their God-given dreams as thoroughly as possible without our objections, even if their choices weren’t ours.
  1. God leads in sometimes puzzling and surprising ways. He sees the long view of each life and puts the circumstances together accordingly.
  1. Watching my children lead satisfying, productive lives wherever they’re located is parentally pleasing.
  1. One day we’ll all live in the same town, the dwelling place of God, never to be separated again.

Katy and Hans are a perfect example of all 4 of these. They probably wouldn’t have met, except that God brought them from the UK and the US to New Zealand, where their participation in Youth With A Mission brought them together (God’s puzzling and surprising way).

Now, with a family, home, church and career, (satisfying, productive lives), they’ve followed their dreams (making their own choices) and also followed Jesus Christ (to his eventual eternal dwelling place).

And all of this brings delight to me, pleasure that negates even the inconvenience of a 4000-mile-wide ocean.

“All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.” (Isaiah 54:13)

Guilty?

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Yesterday I was back in an airport, looking forward to a visit with our son Hans and his family in north England. Arriving early, I bought a McDonalds salad, then settled in at my gate for lunch.

Most of the 200 chairs in the waiting area were empty since a crowd had just boarded, and the two women at the desk were closing up shop. Suddenly the ramp door burst open, and a 20-something guy rushed out, loping in my direction. I looked up, fork in hand, and watched him run past 10 rows of empty seats directly up to me, a security man trailing him.

Not sure what was happening, I took hold of my salad and got ready to jump. “You’re in my seat!” he said, panting with emotion. Surrounded by a room full of empty chairs, I found that hard to believe. “Are you sitting on it?” he said.

Thinking about Caesar dressing going all over my traveling clothes I said, “On what?”

“My phone!” he said. “Under you!”

By now the security guard had arrived and the young man, conflicted between the urgency to find his phone, his plane about to leave, and the security guy, bent down and began feeling around on the floor beneath me. I stood, trying to hang onto my salad, wondering if maybe he was right.

 

As the two women at the desk were on their way over, I was relieved to see I hadn’t been sitting on anything, but he was disappointed. “Oh never mind!” he said in frustration, pushing past the guard and the women toward his flight.

A minute later I watched his plane push back from the gate and wondered if he was looking at me through the window, thinking his phone was in my purse. The bottom line was that he’d accused me of something I didn’t do. Not that he had come right out and said it, but I’m sure he thought it.

The ultimate in being wrongly accused was Jesus. Labeled as a blasphemer against the one true God, his accusers couldn’t have been more off the mark. That same God was his beloved Father, the one sustaining him through life as a human. Jesus loved him intensely and obeyed his every command with perfection, all the way through to an undeserved death.

How must Jesus have felt to be wrongly accused of something contrary to everything he stood for and the essence of who he was? When the young man accused me of sitting on his phone, I wondered if maybe he was right. Jesus, though, never wondered about his innocence. Even after being arrested, accused and beaten, he was still sure of his innocence.

We humans are riddled with real reasons to feel guilty in many categories, yet when accused, we rush to defend ourselves, sometimes stretching what little truth is in us to make our point. Jesus knew he was blameless, responding to his accusers with the silence of certainty.

Of course none of us can be as untarnished as Jesus, but the more we make the difficult choices to reject sinful possibilities, the more we can enjoy the good feeling of guiltlessness, as well as finding it easier to tell the truth.

I am confident of one thing, though. If that young man calls his cell phone and someone answers, it won’t be me.

“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18)