Thoughts On A Given Day

Last night I watched an old movie, Father’s Little Dividend, which starred Spencer Tracy as a man expecting his first grandchild. There was one humorous scene in which he and his wife were trying to stay prepared to go to the hospital at a moments notice in case they got the call letting them know that the baby was coming. This reminded me of 1983 and the birth of my first son. 1983 had already been a good year. We were living just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, in a small town named Wendell. NC State had just recently won their famous basketball championship with Jim Valvano as coach. That was an exciting time to live in the Raleigh area. As I recall it my wife was expecting our first child in approximately two weeks when she began to experience some discomfort. She called her doctor and explained the situation, and I fully expected him to tell her that it was more of the same Braxton Hicks contractions that she had experienced previously. But I was wrong. He was of the opinion that we should come to the hospital. I did not quite share that same opinion. I was a Boston Celtics fan, and that was the Larry Bird era, and that night they were playing in the NBA playoffs. I was enjoying watching the game, and going to the hospital was not on my agenda. I never saw the end of that game, however. Nor do I remember who won.

Dutifully I packed my little sack lunch just like they had taught me in Lamaze class. I packed my overnight bag and toiletries, just as though I expected us to go to the hospital and stay there having a baby, while all the time neither my wife nor I believed that was going to be the case. We were both convinced that we would get to the hospital, they would examine her, and they would soon send us back home. That, however, was not what happened. That night, our first son was born, and a love was born in me that I had never experienced before. I had loved my wife, and I had loved family and friends, but I had never loved like that. When I picked him up and held him I felt a father’s love for the first time. Obviously, I was not the first to have felt that, but it was a first for me. I felt that same love with my second son, and with my third. There’s just something about a child that brings out the love in a person, especially if they are the parent. It is my belief that there is nothing my children could do that could make me stop loving them. I just do. That love was born in me the day they were born. I know that I am not unique in that, and I have grown comfortable with it with time, but in 1983 it was an entirely new experience.

One thing I have discovered since that time is that with love comes a certain vulnerability. People whom we love have the capacity to hurt us. We will take a beating emotionally when we love someone, because in that act of loving we have opened ourselves, we have lowered the barriers, we have exposed ourselves to injury. Love is a wonderful thing, but it is also a many splintered thing. It usually comes with little jagged edges that catch under the skin and fester, but we grab it up just the same, because, splinters and all, love is still a wonderful thing, and we all need it. It would be great if we were all perfect and we never hurt the ones we love, but none of us are perfect. We stumble, we fall, we say the wrong things, we fail to say the right things, we fail to notice when someone we love and who loves us needs our attention – but the love lives on. Personally I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and I hope and pray that those I love will continue to forgive me for the times I stumble, because I certainly will stumble. I certainly will fall. I certainly will fail them from time to time, but I will also love them – splinters and all.

This same principle is true in our relationship with God as well, but even more so. God loves us perfectly, but we will always fail in our attempts to return that love. We will fall, and he will pick us up. We will sever the relationship, but he has provided the means to restore it. All that is required is for us to accept what he has already provided. “Behold,” he said, “I stand at the door and knock.”

 

1 John 4:10

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Romans 5:1-6, 6:23

A Conversational Gospel

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we glory in tribulations also, for tribulations produce perseverance. Perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were yet without strength, at the appropriate time Christ died for the ungodly. Now rarely for a righteous man will someone die; though perhaps for a good man some might dare to die. But God demonstrates His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Even more so, having been justified by His blood, we are saved from wrath through Him. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.