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.
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