I’ve caught the vision, and I can’t keep it to myself.
It’s Wednesday. It’s been a discouraging day of homeschooling as I wonder if anything I’m teaching is sticking, if I’ll ever get the house clean, if I’m ever going to feel like I’m doing a good job of anything. Getting all four of the kids to our Wednesday night worship and Bible study at church is always harder than I estimate it being. But it’s also always exactly what my soul needs–that taste of the Kingdom that renews my purpose in this life.
We rush in, find our place among the body, open our yellow song folders, and sing.
“How deep the Father’s love for us,
how vast beyond all measure…”
But it’s not just me singing; it’s my oldest son, too. He’s standing shoulder to almost shoulder with me, yellow folder open in his hands, and he’s singing every word.
“That He should give His only son
to make a wretch His treasure.”
I’m trying not to look at him because this moment isn’t about me. This moment is him engaging in worship of His Father. This is God drawing my son’s heart to Himself and my son taking ownership of his personal relationship with his Creator. A tear rolls down my cheek anyway, because this right here is worth all the effort of motherhood: every ache in my postnatal body, every dish I wash, every lego I step on, every word I read aloud–it all funnels into the hope that my children might know and love Christ. That God chose me to bring this life into the world and that his voice might be added to the chorus of praise for our Most High King–I am humbled beyond humbled.
And here I see the contrast. Where I have been face to face with this son of mine all day–all life–long–our sin natures often grinding against one another as I seek to show him the way he should go while he thinks he has a better idea of the way he should go–now we are standing side by side, singing in unity to our Heavenly Father. Here, he is my brother. And long after this earthly life is over, He’ll be my brother in Christ, not my child to raise. We will stand next to each other, voices united, worshiping our great God.
So there it is: that’s the vision. I haven’t arrived, by any means, but I see where I’m going, and I pray you can see it too. If we were to look at a timeline of this earthly life and eternity combined, this life would be just a dot on a long line. And the time we spend nurturing children, raising disciples is but a speck inside of that dot. A breath. A vapor.
If the Lord should choose our children for eternal life, then we’re all just bigger siblings doing our best to follow our Father’s orders to help with our little siblings. He’ll yield the heart results; we just need to trust Him and work faithfully until He shows us that the job is complete.
Let us not grow weary of the well-doing you’ve called us to do here in the speck, oh Lord.
And the blind and the lame came to [Jesus] in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant, and they said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise”?’
Matthew 21:14-16
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