Harvests of Obedience

On our last day in Alaska we drove a number of hours from Copper Center to Anchorage.  I’d heard the drive was “nice”, but it started out through a messy heap of souvenir outposts and dumpy homes with generations of cars ornamenting the landscape, changing into scrub pines monotonous in their spindly sameness mile after mile.  I fell asleep after asking to be woken up if something wonderful came into the landscape.  

When I did wake up, snow-covered mountains were beginning to appear on one side, brilliant in the distance.  Within an hour we were in a wonderland of layers upon layers of mountains, canyons, distant peaks and glaciers, forests and plains and all manner of mysterious and magnificent beauty.  We drove for miles and miles overcome by the wonder around the next bend and over the next hill, including an area with some geological phenomenon which had resulted in hills of autumnal reds, purples, golds, greens, oranges, dotted with Dall sheep, tiny white specks who came to lick the rocks for their minerals.

When we stopped, the hill was carpeted with wild roses, lupine, and ground dogwood (Doug called it puppywood).
 

A snow shelf several stories high and several miles long hanging over a mountain ledge, a glacier cutting a white path through a valley for miles…we were awed all the way to the first real town we’d seen in days, where we waited outside to get the tire fixed.  

But I thought about that journey later, after having an interesting conversation with our graduated daughter.  How like this very journey is our seasonal passage through motherhood!  Diapers and baby food and child training are surely tokens through the messy heaps of childrearing; but they are not the Thing itself, they do not comprise the soul of an eternal human being.  Next comes an inevitable passage of tedium through the early discipleship of little hearts and minds and bodies, stifling at times in its sameness and in the feeling that nothing is really being accomplished.  We can be lulled asleep as to the reality of what is truly just around the corner.

And just around the corner is delight unimaginable.

What she and I discussed, flying home over the soaring peaks of snow, was how the sum of children walking in a heart obedience, of children growing up in the habits of the heart which honor parents and seek their wisdom and therefore are habituated into honoring God and seeking His wisdom as young men and women coming into maturity, coupled with the feeble but earnest efforts of parents who are themselves seeking God and His ways first—and despite their failings and shortcomings and sins—the sum of these things is more by far than the estimate of its parts. 

The sum of these things are fruitful children using talents and developing character and skill far beyond what has been taught them, for God brings the increase.

I see so many ways that I have fallen far short of my own ideal, much less God’s blueprint.  I know at least in part the sin that still remains in each of our children as they continue their ascent, seeking God’s ways and understanding.  And yet God has done wonderful things, majestic things, things far beyond our parenting, far beyond our imagining even, in the lives of each of these children. 

I believe one of the cornerstones of this season of awe in who God is making them to be, is a heart of obedience.  A heart geared to say “Yes, Lord” no matter how steep, rocky, painful, or lonely.

This daughter was—she will admit—some piece of work in those very early years.  We’re not singing of white dresses and curls.  I recently began a brief talk introducing contentment with the words, “I was not content the day she ate the dog’s food.”  But those are just the funny parts.  The dark side is that the evil one wants these children born to God-fearing parents to fall.

They learned their catechisms and it should have been one of them for all the times they heard or recited “Obedience is not obedience unless it is immediate, the first time, complete, and cheerful”.   But 40 years later will they or will they not have a hard time responding to God’s hard providences in their lives with an immediate, first time, complete, and cheerful “Yes, Lord.  I will do the next thing.  You are faithful.  I believe that You are kind, and good and I will serve you with all my heart despite how I feel and what I want.”

I’m still learning this, alas.  But I see that God has taken their hearts of obedience as a sacrifice of praise to Him, and is granting far in excess of what we have invested, in our weaknesses.  And it is the most glorious vista in all the world.

You didn’t hear me say it was easy.  Or natural. 

It is His Grace that is supernatural. 

 

A meager and solitary tool ought never boast of creating a masterpiece.

Tribute to a Steadfast Son

His soaked and dirty jeans are drying on the washer, waiting for the load to be started.  Our son is on his way to Indonesia via Seoul and Singapore, waylaid and waiting because of late planes and missed flights.  Three weeks!  Our youngest feels like there’s been a death in the family, never having been away from her brother and best friend before.  But in some ways it is a passing from the death of immaturity into the life of manhood and calling.

That last night before he left was something else!  Back from our vacation he had about 48 hours to finish landscaping work for neighbors who’d been waiting for his return.  He was out in the pouring rain until 8:00, meticulously pressure-washing their driveway, and I’m biting my tongue thinking about that disheveled stack of clothing and sundries still lying on his bed and the empty backpack.   At last, at 9 he’s in our garage.  What now?  Oh.  The moving of his disabled tractor from the neighbor’s garage.   Not nearly so simple as it sounds.  He’s over by himself figuring out the problem for close to an hour, while I’m counting down the minutes until that plane leaves.  Ten o’clock sees us making a roaring racket down the street inching the John Deere along with the Kubota.  But every inch of the figuring out of it all, he had done with steadfast thoughtfulness and planning, experimenting and thinking through how it could be done.  No way in million years could I have moved that thing!  I was fascinated to see his mind's wheels moving, and his calm demeanor in spite of leaving in just a few hours.  Just do the next thing…  

Yes, we were up till 2, and he left before 6;  but in those hours I saw the emerging of a man, steady and sure and minded toward the pieces and parts of the calling God will increasingly be making clear.  And now for three weeks he will be working in the midst of the very kind of environment, uncertainties and difficulties of that world.  Across the world.

On our vacation we got three (yes, 3) flat tires.   Mmhmm, long story.  They were worth it.  Somewhat comically, husband stood by and read the instructions while son climbed under the car and did the dirty work.  We girls laughed and took pictures.

But the real story is a young man learning the skills to take his place as one who can serve.  

A car came by this lonely place, just a path of rocks across the delta where the famous Copper River salmon come through, asking if we were fine but not having the slightest thought to help.  They laughed at him and said it was good that a boy turned out to be good for something after all, and I cried foul.  He’s been a blessing, this boy to man.  What a wild thrill to see all that the Lord is making him to be, to mold him and use him for His glory.  And we’re only at the beginning of the story!

 

  

On Girls and the Secret Places III

continued...

The antidote to all of this?  Being captivated by the wonder of God. Saturation in the wonder of God.  He is the most Interesting, the most Beautiful, the most Desirable, the most Satisfying.

Just this morning we were reading John Piper:

“The devil is real and terrible.  He is much stronger than we are, and he aims to deceive and destroy.  Jesus said, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).  Yet he has been decisively defeated through the death and resurrection of Christ…therefore, if you would have power over the devil, and if you would escape the snare of his deceit and the destruction of your faith, then do what Jesus did and what all the triumphant saints have done.  Treasure up the word of God, and wield it like a sword against your foe….when the powers of darkness are arrayed against you, and aim to destroy your joy, nothing is more precious than to have the word of God ready for the battle.  The fight for joy is not for the unarmed…

“The wise and godly man [woman, girl] turns away from the counsel of the wicked with all their promises of pleasure and finds that “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on this law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.  In all that he does, he prospers” (Ps 1:2-3).  The lovers of God’s word praise the preciousness of the Bible and the pleasures it brings.  They say that it surpasses the most valuable earthly things, gold and silver; and they say its taste on the tongue of the mind and heart is sweeter than honey, and that its richness is like the finest food…."

“The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold or silver pieces…I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil…I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold…How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth…I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food…your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me  joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your Name…”(taken from various Scriptures)   THIS—this—is the trajectory we are looking for, in little adolescent steps of grace, increasingly gaining strength and potency in the lives of our children as they side with the people of God, even those who are suffering, but always those who are single-minded in their purpose and who hate the remaining sin in them and seek to confess and forsake it.  This can happen in a five-year-old’s way, and in a fifteen-year-old’s way, and in a nine-year-old girl’s way.  But it is a Way, a way of thinking, of talking, of living, and it is a becoming.  That is not to say that pious talk is constructed to impress. (This can be the prideful and hypocritical bane of a pastor’s son or daughter.) It is to say that the bent of the heart is hungry for more of that which is good, holy, praiseworthy, pure, kind, loving, truthful, of good report.  This looks different in a high-spirited girl than a quiet and reflective girl, and so it should.  But the charming aspect of its reality, the grit and tenacity of its purposefulness, shines through either way.  And it not only shines through in the presence of her father and mother in her moments close in their presence, but also as the overflow of the heart when she is around other people without her parent’s presence.

“Knowing God is the key to being happy in God.  The more we know of God, the happier we are…when we became a little acquainted with God…our true happiness commenced; and the more we become acquainted with Him, the more truly happy we become.  What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven?  It will be the fuller knowledge of God.”  (John Piper quoting George Mueller)  

Let’s captivate the hearts and minds of the next generation with the surpassing awesome grandeur of our Creator, Lord, and Savior.  There is enough Story there to keep us all entranced for a lifetime!!