Father's Day 2024

Father's Day is in just a few days. This one hits a little different for us. I've mentioned before, we are in the process of adopting a young man whom, a year ago, was a complete stranger to us. We'd never heard his name or heard of the elementary school he was attending at the time. He was living with a family we'd never heard of, celebrating the day with a man who was selflessly standing in the gap until our young man's forever father would come along. My husband is --Lord willing, will be -- his forever father. And, though we have other children who will join us in a celebration of the man my husband is, I have this fierce compulsion to make this occasion as hands-on for our son as I can. I want this day to be one in which he is free to embrace, as his father, the father at the head of our household --and free to trust our Heavenly Father, the head of our home. 

This is such a complex chain of events, connections, emotions, memories, obligations, and concessions --for all parties. As with all of life, there are good memories, things we hoped would last forever, that are to remain only in our hearts and minds. There are bad memories that we seek to put to rest, but just won't seem to go to bed when they are told. There are efforts to extinguish the past and, at the same time, hold onto that which makes us the better versions of ourselves. There are feelings of betrayal and apprehension and longing and misunderstanding. There will be failures and missteps and words said in haste and tears of regret mingled with tears of forgiveness. And there is no better Father to lead us in this way than the One who brought us all together. He understands adoption better than anyone. 

Maybe your story is a little more straightforward --you had a great dad and you married a great dad. Your father encouraged you and guided you in all things big and small, the same way your husband does for your children. Or maybe it's been through many tears and much faith you have healed from the wounds your father inflicted, and you were able to marry a loving father for your children. Maybe your father was the World's Greatest Dad, who was always there for you, even when your children's father wasn't. Or maybe the father you're celebrating wasn't actually a biological father at all, but a loving, honest man who taught you and corrected you, giving you sound spiritual knowledge and modeling for you true wisdom when others were unable to do their part.

As you prepare to mark this special day, I would encourage you to take a moment or several to focus on the Father who loves you more than any other, the Father who so deeply desires a relationship with you that He gave His only Son that all who trust in His Gift might be reconciled in perfect relationship with Him! Give thanks to the Father that provides for and protects His children in ways too benevolent, too complex for us to imagine. Offer up your praise to the Father who created and sustains all things, who is so big He has filled the oceans by scooping water in His palm and measured out the heavens by the span of His hand; and the Father who is so compassionate and careful, He knows the number of hairs on your head and catches your tears as they fall. Give your attention to the Father who placed you in the care of your earthly father --good or not so good --for reasons that He will reveal as you trust Him to direct your path best of all. And share your affection for your Father and other fathers with anyone you meet, that this day might truly be a day of celebration.

Protecting Society's Weakest

Mom, would you paint my nails?

Our youngest, a young man we are currently seeking to adopt, was watching me paint my nails. Had this scene taken place ten years ago, and had I been more informed regarding some of the ideologies this little one has encountered, I probably would have acquiesced --at least, painted his toes. But here we are. It's June 2024, sin is being celebrated on many media outlets and sadly, in many churches, the lines between men and women and right and wrong are being radically, deliberately blurred, and I will probably never know --not entirely --what this child has been told is acceptable, or narrow-minded, or bigoted, or even, real love. I wonder if I will ever get over the feeling of battling a demon I'm not even certain is present. But maybe this puts me at an advantage.

When I was raising my first couple children. Not only was I not walking with the Lord, but I was taking them to church. That's a good thing, though, you say. Yes, it was, but it was a few hours each week that gave me the false sense I was doing all I could to hold back the rushing waters of humanist thinking and self-centeredness that, if we are being honest, was alive and well in the 90s. In the early 2000s, another set of children came to steal my heart. I sort of knew what they were hearing, figured I couldn't do much about it, so I prayed. Occasionally. After all, they were in a good home, right? And now, here we are.

I've heard plenty of folks ridiculing talk of a "gay agenda." I've heard people decry the claim "They are coming for our children." I've known homosexuals who make it their personal calling to intentionally antagonize those who call their behavior sin; they will get in your face using every swear word that comes to mind and will stop just short of public indecency. And, in all fairness, I know those who have no agenda but to be left to their own sin, who have no interest in influencing my children, and are not the least bit offensive or indecent. None of these people are themselves going to heaven, and none of them are any less dangerous to the spiritual welfare of my children and grandchildren. If they're not denying their own passions to protect our children, they are doing them harm. 

Psalm 82:3-4 (NIV) says:
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
    uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Ask the spouse or child of any fallen soldier: defense costs. Children are some of the weakest and most vulnerable of our society. They are unable to fully understand the consequences of sex outside of marriage or thirty years of smoking or marrying someone who doesn't have their own relationship with Jesus. It is up to us to protect them --to act self-sacrificially to protect them --until they are able to comprehend. By failing to protect them from knowing sin, we are failing them in their walk into eternal life. They need our best. Not two hours of Sunday school once a week, not occasional prayer, and not exposure to "nice" homosexuals. Not gay pride parades and drag queen story hours and politically correct cartoons. Not "COEXIST" bumper stickers and ridiculous mantras like Love is love. God is love, and they need a society that is unwilling to lead its weakest down a road they are not at all equipped to travel.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were prohibited from something. What was it? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Our loving Father sought to protect His children --all His children --through this prohibition. They were unable to handle that knowledge. The best way to protect them (and by extension, each one of us) was to call it "off-limits" and depend on their obedience. As children do, they failed; but God did not. He didn't feed them to their desires and expect them to resist; He didn't expose them to the pageantry and rapture of eating the forbidden fruit, all the while saying, "But you decide for yourselves." He protected them. Because He loved them. As He loves us today. 

So, I will not paint his nails. Not his fingernails, not his toenails. Because the flavor of the day is Innocence Stolen. Because our society refuses to protect its weakest. And because, as his parent, I will do everything I can to protect him from anything that will derail him from becoming the man God intends him to be. 

Clear Boundary Lines

We were traipsing through the grounds, enjoying the summer sun. The skies were a perfect blue, and the only clouds were rising from the stacks of the tractors we had come to see. Just off to our right was a sign. We had reached the end of the property. Everything before it looked just like everything past it. If not for the sign, we never would have known we'd wandered onto --What? Someone else's property? A mine field? It sort of reminded me of the Here Be Dragons warning of old. But I'm on the downslope of life --too old to be messing with dragons. We turned around.

2 Corinthians 5:17 makes it clear that when we encounter Jesus, when we are in Christ, we are not the same. There is an end to our old nature, and we are a new creature; old things are gone, and all things are made new. That is what I'd call a boundary line! If we are in Christ, united with Him by faith in Him as our Savior, born again, standing on His work at the cross as our means to relationship with God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit --if this is our condition, we are become a new creation. 

A few years ago, I lost twenty-five pounds. I felt like a new woman! Admittedly, the "new" has worn off a bit, but I am still not who I used to be. I keep an eye on my weight and pay more attention to how my body feels when I eat properly, or I don't. I love the way my clothes fit; I like what I see when I look in the mirror. And when the doctor tells me I'm maintaining a healthy weight and my blood pressure is low? WhooHoo! It's great not being who I used to be! Even better to be made new in Christ! Old things are gone! The desire to drink yourself blind? Gone! The desire to shop 'til your credit score drops? Gone! The desire to cheat on your taxes, your spouse, or Uno? Gone! All things are made new. Not like the boundary line at that truck show. Hmmm, it all looks the same. How do we tell whether we're still where we need to be? Life with Christ is clear, definitive: This is how you used to walk, but this is how you walk today. Ephesians 2:1-3 says,

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Colossians 3:5-7 not only tell us the nature of our old lives, but the consequences to which we were entitled:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.

But the Good News is new life, all things made new: 

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:4-7)

Our thoughts, habits, emotions, passions, pursuits are all conformed and being conformed to those of Christ. The line is drawn, the boundary between old and new is clear, and it is all by the grace of God and the work of His Holy Spirit: 

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance. (Psalm 16:6)

He is pruning the dead branches and plucking up the weeds on what is now His property. And it is dragon-free!