Recently, in the space of one week, our family experienced both extremes of life....One Sunday night, the passing of my Granddad, a man satisfied with years and the grace of God in Christ, into the presence of the Lord from this life, and the following Sunday night, the public dedication of my infant niece, as my sister and her husband stood before the church Body and committed themselves to raise their daughter "in the nurture and admonition of the Word."
That second Sunday evening, as my parents were able to be present to stand up, and commit themselves also to displaying Christ before their little granddaughter, there was a very sensible passing of the mantle - Granddad had gone on to Glory to be with the bride of his youth who had preceded him, and Dad and Mom were now the grandparents, and my sister and her husband are now the parents, I and my brother now the aunt and the uncle respectively, and my niece - along with her older brother - the new generation.
These are moments that occur in every family - and no doubt it was the space of the experiences - both Sunday evenings but a week apart - that highlighted for me this graduation of the generations, and this connectedness with the "human" experience of this life. But more than this, I was overwhelmed with a desire to worship God - the Lord of both life AND death. He has been working in me (at least for this moment) the ability to see that "our times are in his hands" and that he knows the numbers of our days before we have as yet lived even one of them.
I rejoice that my Granddad is now with Christ, because he was revealed to be one of the sons of God in Christ...and I pray with great depth of soul and longing that my nephew and my niece, now but in their first years of life, will eventually also come to be revealed as having been chosen in Christ before the foundations of the world.
And I rejoice - in our smallness, in our powerlessness, in having the "illusion" of control stripped from us for at least a moment, and I worship God, the author of salvation who has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and compassion on whom he will have compassion. Who am I that I should say back to him "why have you made me thus!" And again, who am I that he would be mindful of me? have mercy on me? redeem my life from the pit - and give me a new heart, soft and teachable rather than a heart of stone? Surely it is not because of anything that I have done, but because of his OWN purpose and grace.....
How merciful is our God.
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