Daily Bread, Daily Faith
It's graduation season. Graduates are about to launch into new environments. They are being exhorted to enter into their next chapter ready to serve, ready to learn from others different than themselves. What they may not realize is college staff are undergoing the same re-acclamation on graduation day, only in a compressed time frame Many of us have left our familiar field, familiar coworkers, familiar habitat for the college-wide remixing that is necessary to support commencement. Such a reshuffle is the reason I got to know Missy from our cosmetology department.
Even on such an inspiring day, gentle cynicism is always a safe language to bridge the distances between us. We all have stories of defending the student against the system or defending the necessities of the system against those who unreasonably resist. I warmed up the new huddle with a tale of a parent whose teenage daughter was certain of her lifetime commitment to cosmetology. The parent spent more time arguing against the student's mandatory consultation with career services than such a step would have taken to complete. In defense of the requirement, I voiced confidence that career services might be able to help the student gain insight into the next step in her career path after she gains experience as a cosmetologist. Happily, Missy endorsed my sagacity. Even more happily, she testified that the Lord used her training beyond what was necessary for him cosmetology license in order to provide for the next administrative step in her career. Among relative strangers in a secular environment, she played the part I usually play. The Name of the Lord from her lips broke the invisible but palpable Faith Barrier.
She had other invisible barriers to break down on my behalf. First impressions matter. Her put-together persona was doubly reinforced with 14 years experience in the same college role and her experience as a parent of a child about to graduate high school. She might have, I judged, been the one to originally author the phrase I'd seen on a poster, "You can't scare me. I have children." Before the conversation progressed much either in depth or length, though, she readily referred to asking for the Lord's intervention in something as easily overlooked as the struggle to get her younger child cooperatively in his car seat. As she has seen His care for what some might dismiss as small things, she confessed that she has become both more assertive and more dependent in her prayer life. And she has seen the Lord make a difference in one battle, big or small, she has more readily surrendered the next one to Him.
This softening of her heart over time and surrender of her will apparently has not gone unnoticed. The same kid who once fought her over constraint in a car seat now turns to her with his own anxieties. She has modeled for him the deliberate decision to simultaneously worry about nothing and pray about everything, she has set the norms of his faith. He expects to be prayed for. He will remind his mother to do so. With prayer as his security and his mom's decision to step out in faith and get involved with the church again after years away from it, he is refusing to let anxiety set the tone for his life. He is, his mom reports gladly, progressively more involved in church activities.
I've been warned, of course, that parenting exacerbates anxiety. My wife and I have had a lot of time to think about this, for good and for ill through infertility and as we await adoption. In this wait, the ironic fear of fear can echo. Get ready, well-meaning Christian parents say. The enemy can then twist this toward some elusive perfectionistic goal that we need to be perfected before we are deemed worthy of parenthood. God used Missy to remind me, and perhaps others, that He continues to parent the parent. Just as He told the departing David that He would be a parent to the adult Solomon, Melissa's testimony reminds me that a heritage of faith is a living work in progress. My current faith tank need not hold every drop of confidence in God I, my wife, or my child will need over the convulsive journey of decades that is parenthood. He will continue to supply new epiphanies along with new mercies. When called upon, He will show Himself mighty in the very moment when it seems that the battle over a car seat won't be won.
In his book According to Promise, Charles Spurgeon says our reluctance to pray over so-called small things is more pride than politeness. The sorting system that would relegate some concerns as too small to offer to the Lord, Spurgeon says, is ours, and it's wrong. To Him Who juggles planets, all our earthly affairs must seem small. God is either concerned with all our prayers, Spurgeon challenges, or with none of them. What a blessing it is, then, to have exposition reinforced by experience.
Even on such an inspiring day, gentle cynicism is always a safe language to bridge the distances between us. We all have stories of defending the student against the system or defending the necessities of the system against those who unreasonably resist. I warmed up the new huddle with a tale of a parent whose teenage daughter was certain of her lifetime commitment to cosmetology. The parent spent more time arguing against the student's mandatory consultation with career services than such a step would have taken to complete. In defense of the requirement, I voiced confidence that career services might be able to help the student gain insight into the next step in her career path after she gains experience as a cosmetologist. Happily, Missy endorsed my sagacity. Even more happily, she testified that the Lord used her training beyond what was necessary for him cosmetology license in order to provide for the next administrative step in her career. Among relative strangers in a secular environment, she played the part I usually play. The Name of the Lord from her lips broke the invisible but palpable Faith Barrier.
She had other invisible barriers to break down on my behalf. First impressions matter. Her put-together persona was doubly reinforced with 14 years experience in the same college role and her experience as a parent of a child about to graduate high school. She might have, I judged, been the one to originally author the phrase I'd seen on a poster, "You can't scare me. I have children." Before the conversation progressed much either in depth or length, though, she readily referred to asking for the Lord's intervention in something as easily overlooked as the struggle to get her younger child cooperatively in his car seat. As she has seen His care for what some might dismiss as small things, she confessed that she has become both more assertive and more dependent in her prayer life. And she has seen the Lord make a difference in one battle, big or small, she has more readily surrendered the next one to Him.
This softening of her heart over time and surrender of her will apparently has not gone unnoticed. The same kid who once fought her over constraint in a car seat now turns to her with his own anxieties. She has modeled for him the deliberate decision to simultaneously worry about nothing and pray about everything, she has set the norms of his faith. He expects to be prayed for. He will remind his mother to do so. With prayer as his security and his mom's decision to step out in faith and get involved with the church again after years away from it, he is refusing to let anxiety set the tone for his life. He is, his mom reports gladly, progressively more involved in church activities.
I've been warned, of course, that parenting exacerbates anxiety. My wife and I have had a lot of time to think about this, for good and for ill through infertility and as we await adoption. In this wait, the ironic fear of fear can echo. Get ready, well-meaning Christian parents say. The enemy can then twist this toward some elusive perfectionistic goal that we need to be perfected before we are deemed worthy of parenthood. God used Missy to remind me, and perhaps others, that He continues to parent the parent. Just as He told the departing David that He would be a parent to the adult Solomon, Melissa's testimony reminds me that a heritage of faith is a living work in progress. My current faith tank need not hold every drop of confidence in God I, my wife, or my child will need over the convulsive journey of decades that is parenthood. He will continue to supply new epiphanies along with new mercies. When called upon, He will show Himself mighty in the very moment when it seems that the battle over a car seat won't be won.
In his book According to Promise, Charles Spurgeon says our reluctance to pray over so-called small things is more pride than politeness. The sorting system that would relegate some concerns as too small to offer to the Lord, Spurgeon says, is ours, and it's wrong. To Him Who juggles planets, all our earthly affairs must seem small. God is either concerned with all our prayers, Spurgeon challenges, or with none of them. What a blessing it is, then, to have exposition reinforced by experience.
Eye sparrow watch me
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