Undercover Pastor

My kids are crazy.  Really, they are.  Apparently, they’ve been domesticated to the point that they no longer have any kind of survival instincts.

We had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Santa Cruz with Eleanor’s family, and someone in the group wanted to check out the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  After getting everyone settled and feeding them, we made the short (by adult standards) walk to the beach.  By now it was evening, and the Boardwalk was really crowded, so we decided to walk along the shore.  The kids kicked off their shoes and walked through the water as it washed up on the beach.  Everyone was having a good time.  But the kids started getting more and more energized.  They dared to run farther out.  They cared less and less about getting wet.  Eventually, they tore off their shirts and started wading in the cold water as it was getting dark.   We expected them to come to their senses at any moment.  We thought they’d notice how cold they were and come back out seeking warmth.  But it didn’t happen because, as I mentioned earlier, my children have no common sense.

As parents, we tried to stop them.  We knew that they didn’t have spare clothes.  We knew that we had to walk a mile to get back to the house.  We knew that what the kids found so fun right now  was going to make them miserable very soon!  But now it was done.  The die was cast.

We (the parents) started talking about how to help our children.  Eventually, we decided that I would run back to the house, grab the minivan, drive back to the beach, and pick up the wet kids so they didn’t have to make the walk back in cold wet clothes.  You see, we love our senseless children and are willing to do completely unreasonable things to ensure their well-being – even when the problem is one of their own creation.

As I was huffing and puffing on the run back up the hill, I thought about my own life and my relationship with God, which is a lot like my relationship with my children.  God loves me extravagantly and – even though I frequently seem to have no common sense – continues to go to unreasonable lengths to ensure my well-being.

In fact, as I was trekking up that hill, I realized that I didn’t know the house number of the place I was trying to find.  I knew what street it was one, and I would know it from sight, but it wasaloooong street, and the kids were waiting for me.  I heard, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own insight.  In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight.”  (Proverbs 3:5)  I turned left and found the house with the minivan waiting right out front.  Even as I as working to care for my children, there was another pair of arms underneath, holding both them and me.

I’ve noticed a big difference between the assumptions my 6-year-old son makes and the ones I made at the same age. I used to assume that everyone went to some kind of church. Johnny is surprised to learn that someone goes to church. He realizes that he lives in a post-Christian world.

I hadn’t realized this until my wife was radio “channel surfing” this morning. She came across a Christian radio station and they mentioned “the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Is that a CD mom?” he asked.
“No. It’s on the radio.”
“Yeah, but is it the iPod playing over the radio?”
“No, it’s really on the radio. It’s a Christian radio station.”
“It’s about time!” Johnny replied.

My kids have an innate awareness that this isn’t a Christian world in a way that I never did. It will be interesting to see how that affects the way he sees being a follower of Jesus along the way. He’ll probably help me learn to be a pastor in a post-Christian world too.

During my vacation this year, I had the good fortune of being able to spend a week at my grandmother’s cabin at Donner Lake.  And this year, my aunt had left a kayak for us to use.  The previous night I had tried it out and taken my sons on a short loop in the lake.  It was a lot of fun.

My Dad suggested taking a trip to the channel at the end of the lake – maybe a mile.  There’s a state park there and we could row into it.  That sounded like fun so after dinner one night, we went out.  We started out playfully, following the shoreline around to the channel, but it took longer than I expected, and night was falling.  Stubborn Determined person that I am, I decided to go all the way anyway.  So we went all the way.

By the time I started back, the sun was behind the mountains and a wind had come up.  I didn’t want to be out on the lake at night without a light – invisible to the motor boats on the lake so I had to get back.  I decided it would be faster to head straight across the width of the lake rather than follow the shore, and I began to row as fast as I could.

In the middle of the lake, the waves were significantly bigger, and for a moment, I was concerned that my foolish plan had endangered my boys.  But they were never worried because Daddy was in the boat with them.  Fortunately, we made it back to the dock in plenty of time and without any incidents.

I found myself thinking about Jesus’ disciples going for a similar boat ride with him (See Mark 8:23-27.)  A storm came up and the disciples got scared.  I think I would have also.  Jesus was sleeping, not rowing.  But I believe that the point of the story was that if Jesus is in the boat with you, you don’t have to be afraid, as my sons were unafraid to be in the boat with me.  The good news is that the one in the boat with us isn’t just a decent kayaker, he’s the one who has the power to calm the seas!

I believe I’ve blogged about this before, but lately in Northern California, we’ve had high heat and smoke everywhere from the many fires burning in our state.  This, along with high energy costs, leads to a new urgency to…  wait for it… keep the door closed!

I don’t want to cool the neighborhood!  (Of course I took engineering thermodynamics so I know that we’re actually creating more heat in the neighborhood, but that’s beside the point.)

Are you familiar with any of these classics?

In or out!
Don’t just stand there in the doorway!
You’re letting all the cool air out?

If you know others, feel free to comment.

But even as I face the inevitability of becoming my own father, I’m thinking about what it means to become like my Heavenly Father…  Is that as inevitable?  I thought my dad was nuts with his obsession with turning off light switches, demanding that the refrigerator stay closed, and all the energy around keeping the back door closed.  But I now see the wisdom of it – or the necessity of it.

Some of what God tells us to do has seemed unnecessary to me in the past – some of it’s still confusing.  But many other things have gone from being annoying to wise and helpful.  Much as I have become like my earthly father in many ways, I now hope to become more and more like my Heavenly Father as God helps me to grow in wisdom.  That’s probably the best thing that could happen to my wife and kids too!  But I’ll still be making sure the the door stays closed. 

Lately, my son Joshua has had some trouble with drawing on the floor, walls, furniture, and windows with crayons.  We’ve always had an understanding that crayons are only to be used on paper, and he can answer the question, “Where do we used crayons?”  “On paper, Dad.”  But temptation strikes, and our little artist feels the need to decorate everything around him.

The last time this happened, I had a talk with Josh.  Since he knows that it’s wrong, why does he keep doing it?  “Dad, could you put the crayons up high where I can’t reach them?” he asked.

I wish most adults were so wise!  When you’re experiencing temptation and falling for it again and again, the best thing you can do is to either get it away from you or get yourself away from it!  Joshua has uncommon wisdom for a three-year-old.  Hopefully more of us will learn from Joshua and deal with the things that cause us to stumble by “putting the crayons up high”!

Yesterday afternoon, my kids were starting to get a little bit of cabin fever. It was hot, and the air had been smoky for most of the day, but by late afternoon, the air had cleared a bit and a cool breeze was blowing. “Why don’t you go outside and play, Johnny?” I suggested.

“There’s nothing to do!”

“You could ride your scooter or kick the soccer ball or pull weeds or throw your rocket football or play hide-and-seek with your brother or ride your bike or play with the hula hoop or look for bugs.”

“That’s boring.”

We have a great yard right now and a nice patio, and plenty of toys for the kids to play with. But they stop seeing that and see anything familiar as “boring.”

As I was thinking about how sad that was, I realized that I do the same thing! I focus on whatever is missing in my life at this moment and forget or discount the blessings that God has provided in my life.  Just like Johnny!

This morning, I asked the congregation to think about their blessings and then asked how many had thought of something that hadn’t recognized as a blessing before.  In one service, a bunch of people raised their hands.  In the other, almost none.

We have a choice.  We can be thankful for the blessings we have or we can decide that they’re

“boring” and concentrate on what’s not right.  It’s a matter

of an “attitude of gratitude,” and life’s a lot more pleasant and satisfying that way.

A recent study claims that kids in daycare have better immune systems than those with stay-at-home parents, possibly leading to a reduced likelihood of leukemia.  See the New York Times article here.

This makes me feel a lot better about the various sicknesses that some of our church kids passed around recently.  You see, as it turns out, going to church is good for kids’ immune systems!  Do you think the New York Times will write about it? Maybe we should put it in our church visior brochure!

In Memoriam
Oscar Myra Mendoza Whitney (Myra)
1994-2008

Last night (April 30), our long-haired miniature dachshund, Myra escaped from the back yard.  When we realized it late last night, I went searching for her in the neighborhood and after about 45 minutes, found her across Jefferson Blvd. (a busy, highway-like street with 4 lanes).  She had been hit by a car and killed – instantly from the looks of it.

Myra has been with Eleanor and me for 14 years (9 of them before we had any children).  When Eleanor and I had known each other for just three years, Myra joined our family.  We’ve lived in five different places together, and it’s really hard to see her go.  We knew that she would die one day – maybe even soon – but this sudden, violent death is a little hard to deal with.

I thought it would be fitting to offer a Myra retrospective here.  She got her name because I insisted that if we got a tiny little dog, she would need a joke name.  Hence she was christened Oscar Myra Wienerdog – Myra for short and O. Myra on official documents.  The pictures below capture a bit of who she was.  In order, there are a picture of her as a puppy from an early 1994 webcam in my Silicon Graphics office, Myra’s glamour shot taken by a fellow student while we were in seminary, Myra on the beach, Myra the french fry (any human food, really) thief, Myra the measuring stick that tracked the growth of all three of our children as babies, and finally a white-muzzled Myra in 2008, exhausted after Johnny’s little friends went home from his birthday party.

Now we’ll finally have to learn how to clean up food spills around the table, and I’ll have to figure out how to keep myself company after the kids go to sleep. The house just seems a little bit darker and less friendly tonight.

Myra, you were a member of our family.  We will miss you.

Johnny had a birthday party for some of his little friends last Saturday.

We always struggle with the gift issue.  Eleanor wants to have a “no gifts” party, and I imagine what that would feel like for the kids.  They bring presents to all of their friends’ parties.  Is it fair for them not to get any?

But the kids always behave a bit worse after the deluge of new toys.  It doesn’t take them long to start acting spoiled.  How much is enough?

The culture we live in says that there’s no such thing as “enough.”  More is always better.  But the Good $ense budget class that we offer a couple of times a year at the church suggests that we should “drive a stake in the ground” and decide that enough is enough.

The Bible comes out on the Good $ense side:  2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

Next year we may make the party “gifts optional” in hopes of reducing the number without completely cheating the kids.

Eleanor and I were having a conversation over lunch and the topic of the church came up.  I said something about the church not being my church.  Well my son Johnny said, “It is your church, daddy,”

“No Johnny,” I replied, “It’s Jesus’ church.  And he’s my boss.”

Without skipping a beat, Johnny responded, “He’s everyone’s boss.”

Then my three-year-old, Joshua, started pointing to everyone in the Carl’s Jr. restaurant saying, “Jesus is their boss and their boss and their boss…”

I guess my boys understand discipleship pretty well!

I was just holding my 6-week-old daughter in my arms.  It was actually a pretty special moment.  She was almost smiling as she gazed into Daddy’s eyes.  But then she started to get sleepy.  And she hadn’t had her pink eye drops yet.  So I held little Lydia as her mother dosed her with the drops.  She screamed and cried for a long time.  I felt bad.  I knew that Lydia needed the drops to be healthy, but I also knew that they were painful for her.

I believe that God must have the same experience.

“My child, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves the one he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” Proverbs 3:11-12

I wouldn’t bother to give Lydia drops if I didn’t care about her well-being.  And God wouldn’t bother to discipline and teach us unless he loved us…  It’s no fun, but it helps to know that it comes from love.  Some day, Lydia will understand that too.

“Can I have some apple juice?” my son Joshua asked.
“Sure,” I responded.
“DAD, HE ALREADY ASKED MOM AND SHE SAID NO!” my older son Johnny yelled.

Yes, Joshua has discovered the fine art of continuing to ask until you get the answer you want.  Dave Barney, a system software director I worked for for a while, called it “toddler syndrome.”  People did it in big technology companies too.  Just keep asking people at all levels of the organization until you find someone who will give the answer you want.  Sometimes even the corporate big wigs would do.  It’s like something out of a Dilbert comic strip:

Corporate VP to software development manager: “Can you get the project finished by the end of this month?”
Software manager: “No, even if we finished today, the testing cycle would last longer than that.”

Corporate VP to software development manager’s boss: “Can you get the project finished by the end of this month?”
Software manager’s boss: “I don’t see why not!”

That got us into a lot of trouble in the computer business.  It gets me into trouble at home too.  “What did you just tell Joshua?”

But it’s most dangerous in our lives as Christians.  People look for churches or small groups or friends who will tell them that whatever they want to do or not do, or to believe or not believe, is OK.  We don’t want to face difficult truths, and today, there is enough variety of belief and practice out there that we don’t have to.

Sometimes that saves us from error or persecution.  Sometimes it lets us continue down paths that harm us and others.

I wish Joshua had been honest with me.  In this case, Mom said no to the request for apple juice because she was taking care of the baby.  It was no problem for me to get the little guy some juice.  But the “toddler syndrome” kept us from getting to the root issue.  I hope more of us can get to that point in our faith too.

Our daughter Lydia arrived in an unexpected way (surprise!)  When we arrived at the hopsital for the scheduled c-section – a bit disappointed – we learned that Eleanor was far enough along that they could induce labor after all.  (We thought that was impossible because she had had a previous c-section.)  Sixteen and a half hours later, the baby was born.

She’s a great kid, and I look forward to getting to know her better.  I definitely have a lot of lessons to learn as the father of a daughter.  (She didn’t come with a manual.)

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know that this is the time of year when I get worried about the church finances.  Our church is a transformation congregation that hasn’t completely arrived yet.  Each year, the financial needs grow faster than our financial resources.  Sure, our reach should exceed our grasp, but this is the stuff that gives finance committee chairpeople ulcers.  Pastors too.  This year the gap’s $23,000 (which is more than our savings).

But if you’re expecting me to write about that, you’re in for a surprise.

This year, we have a baby coming – Lydia will be her name.  In fact, she’s coming tomorrow.  She will either come naturally in the wee hours or else at 9:00 a.m. via c-section.  She may have a problem with her kidneys – we’ll have to find out after she’s born.  Also, we’re buying a house – we should be closing escrow next week and moving right after Christmas.  And to qualify for the loan, we had to fix a bunch of stuff in and around our current house and find someone to rent it by the 15th.  (It’s nearly impossible to sell a house right now in our market.)

For some people, that might not be a big deal.  But I only have so much ability to handle things that are out of my control and that still have significant effects on my family, on the church, and on me.  Right now, there’s absolutely no way that I can lay out a plan for the next month.  I don’t even know what all of the variables are.  It hurts my brain when I try to plan…

That makes is much easier to let go.  I don’t know what the church budget should look like.  I don’t know when to plan to move.  I have to plan the house maintenance one day at a time.  I certainly can’t make the baby come or do anything to prevent the c-section (though we did by an exercise ball )  Each thing falls into place as it falls into place.

I’ve been spending lots of time handing things over to God.  It’s a discipline.  I keep handing things over.  Baby, budget, old house, new house…  And God keeps coming through.  Already most of the house projects are done.  We got renters yesterday.  And baby Lydia will be on her way tomorrow.  Meanwhile, I’ll keep handing things over and trusting that God will handle the concerns of that day.  Jesus said it, and I’ve read it a hundred times:

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  Matthew 6:34

But now, because I have no hope of controlling it all, I’m getting a chance to live it.  And, not surprisingly, Jesus is right.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

Well, baby Lydia is due in two days. We are really looking forward to seeing her, and we’d love it if Eleanor would go into labor right now. Also, we’re buying a house and I’d love to start getting it ready to move into. There’s just too much time.

But there are so many things that need to be done! Before the baby gets here, I have to square away all of the church stuff and make sure the church will be ready for Christmas (I’ll preach Christmas Eve, but I won’t do my usual preparation, coordination, and publicity work.) We also need to find someone to rent the current house. We need to arrange insurance for the new house, and need to find and set up the baby things. There’s just not enough time.

So I’ve really set myself up, eh? Or I could look at it as winning either way.  If she comes now, we get to see her.  Yea!  If she comes later, there’s more time to get ready – also good.

We’ve had lots of people praying that Lydia will arrive when the time is right.  So I’m going to go with that.

We’ve got a baby coming and day now and are also planning to move into a new house.  It’s gotten much harder to do simple things, like preparing sermons and remembering what I’m supposed to do each day.  There’s just so much on my mind and so much to do.  Read my post “The Baby’s Coming” about the theological problem on the church blog.

I’m hoping that when the baby actually comes I’ll be able to focus on her and my kids and let some of this other stuff go.  (But in the next 30 days, we still need to find someone to rent our current house!  Know anyone?  Check out the house here.)

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Lately, as my kids have been getting bigger, I’ve noticed that t least one of them seems to be doing something I have an objection to almost all of the time. Johnny’s throwing a ball up to the ceiling and Joshua’s jumping off of a chair, or somebody’s pulling a pen out of the desk, or someone’s got their face pressed up against the window (leaving a mark, of course)… Some little annoying thing.

I could just stay on them all the time – telling them “don’t do that,” “stop it!” “put it back” over and over and over…

Now I’m not recommending laissez-faire parenting. But I realized couple of days ago, that I don’t have to do that. I can let some of this little stuff go. Otherwise, the kids will just learn to tune me out. Then when something big comes, they won’t even hear me. Not to mention that it’s hard to feel loved by someone who’s always criticizing you about something.

Another thing Eleanor and I do is to focus on whatever issue is most pressing at the time. We currently have zero tolerance on a habit Joshua has developed. When we tell Johnny not to do something, Johnny immediately does it. Right now, it’s straight to “time out” every time he does it.

It occurs to me that this is the same way the Holy Spirit works on us. God could easily say no to me every second or two for some action or thought. But instead God seems to focus on one area in our lives at a time. One day something seems OK and the next day the Holy Spirit is on it until it’s gone.

Kind of nice that God doesn’t beat us up as often as would be justified. It’s a lot easier to feel loved this way, and I don’t have to crawl into a hole and hide feeling like there’s no hope. There is hope as long as God is working.

I just had a couple of weeks of vacation.  Some of it was spent working on our house, but some of it was spent at my grandma’s cabin on Donner Lake.

At four-and-a-half years old, my son Johnny has reached the stage in his development where he works furiously to create indestructible sandcastles.  he had a great one going one afternoon.

“The water wins all battles,” I told Johnny.  “We can delay it for a while, but eventually the water wins.”

Johnny didn’t believe it.  He put a tree branch in place and dug a moat to catch the water- pretty good civil engineering for someone who isn’t five yet.  And it looked pretty good.

When we returned the next morning, some of the castle was still there!  But we happened to witness the moment when the waves wiped out the castle.  Because we had talked about it, it wasn’t crushing to Johnny.  He seemed to have a moment of enlightenment…

Johnny’s predicament came to me when I was thinking about my own situation.  God has been inviting me to trust and encouraging me to spend more time in prayer.  But something inside me resists.  I know that I can trust God, and I make decisions according to that belief, but I still feel the stress.  It occurred to me that I am expending huge amounts of energy to hold God back – just like Johnny’s engineering efforts to keep the water away from his castle.  For some reason, I am working hard to reinforce my castle’s defenses.

God really does win all battles.  All I can do is resist in a futile effort to keep God from redecorating the beach.  What would it be like to trust so completely that if God wanted to wipe out a sandcastle in my life, I would be OK with it?  I can imagine it – and sometimes, I can live it – but much of the time, I cause myself unnecessary hardship by resisting God.  What a waste of energy and what needless wear and tear on my body and mind!  All you can do trying to stop God is hurt yourself.

I am going to work on letting go…  on allowing God to redesign the landscape as He sees fit and save my energy for more important things like ministry and spending time with my wife and kids.

Want to join me?  Leave a comment.

I was getting ready to blog on all the projects we’ve been doing this week while I have time off from my job at the church – at least that was what I planned to write about until disaster struck.  We’re considering buying a new house (pray for lower interest rates!) and we need to get this house ready to sell or rent.  So this week, we had an impressive list of repairs and clean-up jobs to work on.

And we have finished some of them!  We bought and installed a new stove; we chose and ordered new flooring for the dining room; we removed, fixed, and reinstalled a sticking sliding door; we planted climbing plants and installed trellises on the back patio; we built and installed a top cover for the bathroom medicine cabinet so the wiring is safely enclosed; and we had begun some other projects such as painting, drywall taping, and stucco repair.  The list was actually a bit too long, and I’m doing a wedding this week so we were a bit stressed.

But that was nothing.  Just after lunch, Eleanor was resting and I was reading something on the computer when Johnny came in covered in paint.  I went outside to find that he had opened a gallon of white primer in the garage and used two Frisbees to bring paint out to the lawn to put it on the door Eleanor had been painting.  There was a huge puddle of paint in the garage and our new patio was covered with multiple trails of paint between the garage and the lawn.  He had also painted several things along the way.  I wish I had taken a picture of it, but we were really concerned about getting the paint cleaned up fast before too much of it dried.  Paint dries fast when it’s 102 degrees out.

We spent all afternoon with scrub brushes, dish soap, and a pressure washer trying to get back to where we were yesterday, and we’re not there yet.

Are Eleanor and I frustrated?  Oh yeah.  Am I upset and disappointed with my son who went and did a bunch of things we’ve repeatedly told him not to do?  Sure.

But sometimes, something that pushes you so far that it’s completely impossible to execute your plans is a little bit freeing.  When our goal was still in sight, I was feeling a lot of stress about executing according to plan.  Now, even if we make no mistakes, we can’t finish it all in the time we have so I can be free!

Now I have to rely on God to get me through this.  The idea that I was in control was an illusion in the first place and now it’s been dispelled.  Will I sleep better tonight with everything shot to pieces than I did last night when we were on track?  I’ll have to let you know.  Part of me is experiencing the freedom and another part is struggling to regain control.  It’s too soon to tell which will win.

Some people live in that reality all the time.  In truth, we rely on God’s power and grace and just to get through every day.  Some people who live with big challenges are in touch with that all the time.  I personally am not always aware of it, but I am today.

Johnny, my four-year-old son, put into words what a lot of people believe but won’t say. The other day we were just arriving at home after an outing and Johnny just came out and said, “I think my prayers don’t work or God doesn’t hear my prayers.”

“Why do you say that, Johnny?” Eleanor, my wife, asked.

“Because he leads me in temptation,” Johnny replied matter-of-factly, referring to the line in the Lord’s Prayer – “lead us not into temptation.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I keep praying and praying but every day I’m tempted.  Like splashing water in the sink.” (Johnny has had some trouble lately where he spends ten minutes playing in the water in the bathroom sink instead of washing his hands.)

When we recovered from the shock that our four-year-old was doing some decent theological thinking, we had to talk to him a bit and assure him that God does hear his prayers, and that some amount of temptation is just a part of life – that even Jesus experienced it.

But Johnny will have more examples of “unanswered prayer” over time. I have found that the most common ways of responding to that problem are not helpful.

1) “It’s God’s will.” True, some prayers aren’t answered the way we’d like because God has other plans. I could pray to win the lottery and God might know that if I won the lottery I’d become an insufferable materialist (it’s just hypothetical God!) But what about a child dying. What does it mean for that to be God’s will? What about terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center? Is “God’s will” the right answer there? I don’t think so. At some point, we have to acknowledge that we live in a fallen world and that crummy stuff is going to happen as a result of people’s bad choices and the effects of living in a sin-soaked world.

2) To get around the “God’s will” problem, many people decide that God just can’t be bothered with our affairs. God merely “cries with us.” That is part of what God does, but it’s not sufficient. Now God isn’t powerful anymore. God “can’t” help us. That isn’t biblical! How does that mesh with James 4:2 “You do not have, because you do not ask” or the words of Jesus himself, for example, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” I guess you have to “spiritualize” that. But I don’t read the New Testament that way. I read that we serve a powerful God, indwelt by a powerful Holy Spirit.

3) “God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no.” I hate that. In much of his teaching on prayer, Jesus tells us to keep coming to God again and again and again. Why would we do that if there’s some simple yes or no answer process? I believe instead that God answers all prayers – sometimes by changing the world and sometimes by changing our hearts. If we keep coming to God long enough, we will stay in conversation with God and in the end, God will either give us what we ask or will change the desires of our hearts to fit with God’s will. That has been my experience. Not that it happens right away. I’ve had things take years before my constant coming to God actually changes my heart. See Luke 11:5-13 and Luke 18:1-8.

If we reject those three statements, we don’t get any easy answers – God wanted it that way, God can’t do anything about that, God said no. We have to deal with the ambiguity and mystery. And it would be unbearable except for one thing… God loves us. God loves us more than we can understand. If we trust that we serve and pray to an infinitely loving God, then it’s easier to live in a world where things don’t work as we think they should. But we’re called to keep coming, to stay in conversation with God, even to wrestle with God! Our God has chosen to be influenced by us – that’s what prayer is – so we might even prevail!

Keep the faith, friends, and trust that the Lord is with us – even in the really painful and messy times. That’s what we plan to teach Johnny as he grows up.