Some day, and it is a day I dread, my son will be struggling with something and say “what’s the point?”
I pray with more fervor than I knew I had that I am there that day so I can tell him how Death has been fighting for him since before he was born and that the Father allowed us these struggles so that we could know with greater certainty than before, that our God is with us. That he is greater and as he has delivered us before, he will do so again.
I don’t know what the point is, only that Jesus walks by us every step of the way.
Yesterday my son was born. (and I am definitely one of those proud dads thats always talking about my son and probably will be talking about it him for more than a little while) During the birth the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and the hospital staff oh so calmly cut the chord, pumped some air into his lungs and he was perfectly fine. Just to be sure, they took little Aodhan (pronounced Aiden) to the neonatal intensive care unit (nicu) to make sure everything was ok. Monday morning I was waiting for this boy at 1:34am and having finally seen him there I was at 9pm the same day waiting for him again.
Now I knew he was fine. I went and saw him in the nicu and saw how well he was doing got reassured by three doctors (including the midwife who delivered) four nurses and a partridge in a pear tree. But still I stood in the recovery room waiting for him with a kind of desperation I have not known before.
Desperation as applied to waiting is not something I have ever understood until now.
Ten virgins waiting for the bridgegroom in the night made no sense to me before this week. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand it to be honest. But I do understand the difference between the five wise brides and the five foolish ones. I understand the servant who waits by the door for the master to return. I understand why Jesus says “no one mourns while the bridgegroom is among you.”
And I understand the father waiting for the son who left to come home. Today I understand what it means to wait in desperation.
We’re about to have our first child. Well she’s the one doing all the work I’m just kinda along for the ride at this point. It is 1:34 AM. I have been up since 4:30 AM yesterday. I’m tired, my back is sore, my nerves frayed and I’m in agony because my wife is in so much pain and there is absolutely diddly squat, jack nothing I can do about it. But despite just how wrapped up and torn up I am – there is nowhere else in this world I want to be right now.
Despite the pain, the struggle and everything else- I know that it is worth it. Well I suppose it might be more fair to say that I have faith it is worth it but it amounts to the same thing.
I could draw all kinds of parallels between where I am and where famous people of the bible were at one time or another but it boils down to the same thing every time:
The best way The Lord’s way, is not always easy, but it is the best.
The Father told me that it was time for us to have a child and so here I am, now 1:55 AM watching my wife sleep between contractions knowing that this is the absolutely best place for me to be. Although, i probably won’t say anything like that to my wife until AFTeR the baby comes
I really did write this at 1:34AM but for various reasons I wanted to wait to post it until after our baby was born. For those of you who were praying for us during the labor and delivery- THANK you! Much love and blessings to all
Some scholars like to argue about the moment of creation. Jurgen Moltmann wrote a very compelling argument describing and theorizing about how exactly the world was created from the nothingness that preceded it.
And to be honest I really don’t care what happened right then. But Genesis does tell us that the Spirit brooded over the Chaos waters. I wrote about this a while back but I have something else I’m seeing now in the way in which the Spirit, the ruach exists over the chaos waters in the moment before creation.
Translations differ, but generally the agreement seems to be that the spirit hovers over the water. It hangs in the air as an eagle hovering over her nest while feeding her young. In other words there is this sense of very close, intimate presence yet not actual contact because that contact would be destructive. Read more…
Not going to lie, I got a lot going on right now. I could see my son any day now, we’re going to close on a house soon, got this conference coming up… yeah I’m a little distracted today!
Anyways, I was thinking about writing something awesome and encouraging and about how it’s times like these where we can either stand our ground and worship God or fall apart. Thankfully Hillsong says it better than I do so I don’t have to stress over it.
