At home, I've had on repeat this YouTube video of a worship song, including when I am having some solitary time in prayer and Bible reading, and particularly when I am lifting up our children to God. With one in Taiwan, one in Kansas, and one in fifth grade, it distinctly feels like our kids are further away from us in physical distance and in personal influence. Being a parent means loving another human being more than yourself, wishing good for them more than your own good, and as they grow up realizing that there's less and less you can do to secure that for them.
Amy and I have prayed for our kids since before they arrived in our family, but in this phase our supplications are more raw and visceral. We wish to protect them and increasingly can't, for them to make good decisions even as they are freer to make bad ones, for them to be kept from harm though they have never been more susceptible to it. And so, with a little bit of faith and a lot of desperation, we find comfort that, through the bumps and bruises of life, God's hands are upon them.
What is so moving about this worship song is that God's presence extends well beyond our reach into our children's lives. "A thousand generations" is an unfathomable word of blessing to speak into our existence. "And your children, and their children, and their children" is but three generations, and yet it is such a wonderful thought, that the same God who has blessed us will be in the same business for our great-grandchildren. No wonder why I savor this blessed thought.
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