Monthly Archives: July 2013

Face to Face

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Yesterday Birgitta and Emerald shared some giggle-time watching YouTube videos of laughing babies. Emerald responded with delight, as if each face was part of her inner circle of friends.

I see you!What is it about a picture of a baby that delights another baby? Even when she looks at herself in a mirror and smiles, she might not know it’s her, but she knows it’s another baby-face and laughs in response.

Not so with adult faces. Most little ones stare with skepticism at pictures of adults unless they know them personally. In some mysterious way a baby knows that another baby is “somebody like me.”

After reading the Bible, I’ve gotten the impression God looks at people much the same way, smiling at us with pleasure. Scripture says, “He delights in his people.” (Psalm 149:4) This is illogical and mysterious, since he’s perfect and we’re far from it. So why does he delight in us?

Could it be because he made us “in his image?” In what sense, though, are we the image of him? The only thing I can think of is that he and we are all eternal. Or maybe he enjoys us just because he made us. Even in our human world, when we make something we get attached to it, whether it’s a story we’ve written, a picture we’ve painted, or a room we’ve designed.

Despite those possibilities of why God takes pleasure in us, the most probable reason is that we’ve made the righteous choice to choose him, enjoying him personally, directly, one-on-one. When I think of him delighting in us because we’re delighting in him, it begins to make sense.

Still, there are verses that step outside of us focusing on him, passages that flat-out say how much he enjoys us. For example, Psalm 18:19: “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” And another one: “The Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.” (Psalm 149:4)

Even in these, though, we see how “rescuing us” and “crowning us” has been accomplished only through his Son. So he can delight in us because he delights first in Jesus and then sees us through the lens of that perfection.

But if we want to work on being more Jesus-like ourselves, he tells us how:

  • take time to read and study the Bible (Psalm 112:1)
  • do our best to obey his commands (Psalm 119:47)
  • fear him and put our hope in his love (Psalm 147:11)
  • speak words of praise to and about him (Psalm 70:4)
  • daily listen for his wisdom (Proverbs 8:34)
  • strive to live blamelessly (Proverbs 11:20)
  • recognize that only he can save us (Isaiah 61:10)

And then, just as Emerald smiles when she sees another baby, God will smile on us.

“The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him.” (Psalm 37:23)

You decide.

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Brand newWhen a new baby comes into the world, his or her needs must all be met by someone else. Newborns have no ability to help themselves, and if a baby bottle of nourishing milk was lying an inch from his or her mouth but wasn’t fed by someone else, the little one would starve.

Because of that complete helplessness, parenthood is a massive undertaking. Moms and dads can choose to do a thorough job or none at all, though thankfully most choose wisely and care well for their little ones.

 

Deciding what she'll hearSlowly but surely children take over the pieces of their lives, starting with holding up their own heads. Later they sit, crawl, walk, and feed themselves. But for many years, what they see, hear, taste, and touch is controlled by parents.

Why did God set it up this way? Why are babies so helpless and parents so powerful?

Surely he wanted families to bond, and serving the needs of another is a good way to start. (Babies are especially good at forcing that one.) But the best possible reason God did it that way was his wanting us to mimic his fatherly role in our earthly parenting so we’ll better understand why he fathers the way he does. That reasoning works with both the pluses and minuses of a parent-child relationship.

As parents we learn to love our children intensely (as he loves us) and discipline them fairly (as he does us). We figure out how to provide for our kids (as he provides for us) and learn to let them make mistakes (as he does with us).

These parenting parallels and many others help us understand God and his ways a bit better than we otherwise might. Even if we haven’t had children, referring back to our own childhoods is a good way to better appreciate our bond with God the Father. And it’s especially helpful when life isn’t going our way.

TantrumWe don’t like the negatives, the same way a child doesn’t like to be told no. But when we consider that most of our no’s to children are for their own good, it gets easier to cooperate with (and eventually appreciate) God’s no’s to us.

And as we let our children pay the painful natural consequences of their decisions, whether it’s a toddler’s or a teen’s poor choice, it dawns on us that many of the messes we still get into as adults are our own doing, too. And God lets us foolishly move into them “for our own good.” Stumbling through miserable natural consequences of mistakes we’ve made is a guarantee we’ll do better next time.

Eventually our kids do grow into conscientious adults. We aren’t responsible for them after they turn 21, but as we all know, none of them are left out in the cold after they launch. Instead, God takes over from there. And what happens after that can be exciting to watch…. in their lives and in our own!

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” (Colossians 3:20)    [….which applies to the adult children of God, too!]

Toward the Light

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Rosie Maple MothLast week was National Moth Week. Until I heard about it on the radio, I didn’t know there was such a thing. This year was the ninth annual, established by a handful of moth-loving people in an attempt to increase appreciation for the 160,000 different species of moths.

One of my children absolutely hates moths. When leaving the house after dark, Birgitta dashes through a multitude of fluttering wings on our front porch with screams of distaste and panic. “Get off me!” she shrieks, if one of them touches her.

Loving the light.“What exactly do you hate about them?” I said.

“Their furry bodies.”

“But aren’t they kinda fluffy-cute?”

“Absolutely not!” she said, shuddering.

Maybe the real reason moths are unloved is their nocturnal habits. They join bats, owls, and other scary creatures of the dark. Their butterfly cousins, flitting about in the sunshine, represent good luck and new beginnings. But moths? Tradition has them symbolizing “dangerous attraction leading to unhappiness.” After all, flying into fire to get close to a light is about as unhappy as it gets.

Toward the lightWhy would God program a moth to fly toward light? The answer is pretty interesting. Porch lights and fires weren’t his original intention. Instead, he wanted them to look up.

God gave moths the ability to calibrate their flight paths using the moon as their primary reference point. So the unsung moth should get a little appreciation for being aerodynamically sophisticated. But they get into trouble when they confuse porch lights or fires with moonlight. One expert put it this way: “A moth’s attraction to an artificial light or a fire could be related to orientation, which leads to dis­orientation since the moth wasn’t expecting to actually get to ‘the moon.’ Then confusion results.”

I think of how different this is from flying toward the Light described in Scripture. Jesus was and is the self-proclaimed “Light of the World.” The closer we get to him, the greater our benefits. Unlike a moth becoming disoriented by flying too close to a light, we become more clear-headed the closer we get to Jesus.

Light is light as far as a moth is concerned, and the one light God intended as their guide (the moon) isn’t always the one they follow. When they get burned, it’s too late. Watching this happen, we could take a lesson.

God intends for us to follow only one Light, too, but sometimes we become attracted to people or things that seem just as good as Jesus and his values. When we do that, we get every bit as disoriented as a zig-zagging moth.

Maybe National Moth Week is a good time to make an annual check of our light source. If we catch ourselves heading toward the wrong one, we could reorient ourselves toward the Light of the World and avoid getting badly burned.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)