For the better part of my first 20 or so years, an annual rite of passage marked the early days of January. Each year I would reflect on the past and make plans for the future. My aspirations matured over that time from hopes to make the baseball team one year to intentions to be a better student or commitments to read the Bible through in another year. All these year-to-year machinations were quite natural, unscripted, and simple. Basically, I wanted to become a better person.
My New Year ritual became more complex, and undeniably much more sweet, when God brought Donna into my life. Suddenly, my resolutions had to account for a girl who would soon begin to complete me, to add dimensions to my experience I could never have expected and would not desire now ever to lose. My yearly assessments and adjustments were no longer minimal, me-centered exercises. They began to include a delightful duty to become a better partner.
I have discovered a new impression, a growing awareness that presents itself with the dawn of each New Year. What began as a somewhat indecipherable whisper to my spirit on January 1, 1987 (my first New Year’s Day as someone’s Daddy), seems to have grown in volume and in mass each year to the point that now my soul resounds annually with a mild and passionate roar I can almost define with words. Since becoming a father, every New Year brings me more clarity, conviction, and concern about the world my children must pass through to get Home. Each January finds me giving ever more thought to what the next 12 months hold for my tribe. As I strain to make out what is just now rising upon the distant horizon, I invariably anticipate the next five, ten, or twenty years. O, Lord, how might I become a better parent?
How will our kiddos fare in 2008? Are they ready for the next leg of their race? If they should find themselves in the throes of the worst-case scenario (whatever that may be), are they confident enough in God’s love, wisdom, and power to trust Him? Should they fail miserably, are they assured enough of our love for them that they find and rest in the harbor of their parents’ nurture and not to be defined by their failure? Should they succeed beyond their wildest imaginations, are they so grounded in God’s Word, so God-centered in their orientation, that they effectively maneuver around the slippery slopes and subtle pits of their triumph and find ways to honor the Giver and to serve other people?
Parents usually have definite desires for their children’s lives and designs on them as well. Donna and I are not exceptions to this general rule. We want, I suppose, what most parents want for their kids – healthy growth from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, an education that prepares them to excel, and bright prospects for their future prosperity.
In addition to these basic aspirations for our children, Donna and I hope for, pray for, and purposefully pursue some specific aims for their lives. Sure, prestigious jobs, supportive spouses who love them unreservedly, safe and secure home life, and lots of healthy, happy children – these would be sweet trimmings we would welcome in our kids’ futures. These bits and pieces, however, are actually mere accessories that, while they may make the ride less bumpy, perhaps even more enjoyable, are not at all essential to their journeys. No, the stuff we would see saturate our children’s lives is of a more simple and sturdy nature.
We want each child to know Jesus Christ personally and intimately. We want them to love His bride, the church. We want them to dream God-sized, God-given dreams and follow those dreams with gusto and grit. We want each son and daughter to engage fully in Father’s adventurous purposes for their lives. We want them to enter the fray boldly and resolutely, eager and equipped to endure to the end. We want our children to be ever-increasing in their drive towards Heaven so that when they break through the veil at life’s finish line their momentum carries them “farther up and further in” on that glorious shore than we ever imagined. We want them to bring many people with them in their wake.
While I have come to expect the annual anthem calling me to parental attentiveness and prayer, these past two New Year’s Days (2007 and 2008) I began to hear a new voice in the chorus. Did I say a new voice? Actually, I am hearing now what seems to be an entire choir singing. Admittedly, I was not so aware of this new part last year, but this past week the intensity of this relatively new set of burdens has surprised me. Now, in addition to my responsibility to become the best person, partner, and parent I can be, the New Year greets me with the welcome weight to become a better pastor.
[Please notice the order: person, partner, parent, pastor. Before God, I must be a better person before I can be a better partner, a better partner before a better parent, and a better parent before a better pastor. My tendency is to try to set those priorities on end and work from the back to the front. My walk with God comes before my walk with my spouse. Similarly, my walk with Donna precedes my walk with my children as my walk with them does my walk as your pastor.]
As a husband and father, I yearn to see my loved ones grow and prosper. In the same way, as your pastor, I long to see you, beloved, grow and prosper in 2008 and beyond. God has kindled this desire on my part for you, and He has used it this season with fresh and more pressing urgency to direct my prayers and study. I covet for you, beloved, a dream akin to that I expressed above for my children (the italicized paragraph). So, today we will begin two new series of messages. The next five Sunday mornings we will consider what it means to be “born again” (my supreme desire for us all). Sunday evenings, we will seek to chart a course for 2008 based on five foundational practices we need for this journey. These two series will be deeply personal and distinctly pastoral as God graces me to share my heart’s longing for each one of you.
To the ends of the earth until the end of time!
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