And she really likes pitching to me.
Tag Archives: fatherhood
Elizabeth Covers Paradise from Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto — Well, Kinda
Melissa, Me, Love, Cardinals, Marriage, Family
The 2006 World Series was great. It was the first time in my life that I got to see the Cardinals win, and it happened to be simultaneous to Melissa and I moving closer to engagement. I had the ring, just waiting for the perfect timing.
I proposed the day after the Cardinals won the Series…
Five years later we get to celebrate their championship with three more little Cardinals.
You Can Take This to the Bank
If boys don’t learn, men won’t know. And boys will not learn unless fathers teach.
– Doug Wilson, Future Men, 10.
But I Wub Alternative Realities That Delay Responsibility Where It Matters
We may need to say to a number of our twenty-something men, “Get off the video games five hours a day, get yourself together, get a challenging job and get married.” It’s time for men to man up.
William J. Bennett, Why men are in trouble
Patience Is Essential to Leadership
I think I’ve learned this in parenting.
My leadership as a dad would be so easy if my words effected instant change. If I could just say something and then it happened. No disobedience. No need for explanation. Just a simple, “Elizabeth, sweetie, please ____” and voilà!
But it doesn’t happen like that. Patience is essential to leadership. There’s no way around it.
Patience is essential to leadership because transformation doesn’t happen when we drop the one-line zinger. As much as we wished it did, it still doesn’t. Transformation or positive change happens by persistent presence, by being able to say that word and to step back and to wait. To say it again another time and then another time. Then Repeat.
This is how Elizabeth and Hannah and Micah will learn the gospel. The occasional sermon during my best moments in parenting are nothing compared to the daily, desperate, let-me-remind-you-again-about-authority-and-grace-and-Jesus stutters.
Without faith it is impossible to be a happy Christian parent.
A Funny Conversation with Elizabeth
Reading at my desk yesterday, Elizabeth walks up beside me —
Elizabeth: Daddy, that’s not the Bible.
Me: I know, sweetie. This is just a book by a man named John Owen. It’s called The Glory of Christ.
Elizabeth: [while handing me a DVD] this is called “Shrek.”
A Great Conversation With My Dad About Albert Pujols and Iran in the Suez Canal
((Ringing . . .))
Dad: Hello
Me: What is Cardinals nations going to do?
Dad: Look, if Pujols goes to another team, I am done with Major League Baseball.
Me: Come on, Dad. We were Cardinals before Pujols and we’ll be Cardinals after Pujols.
Dad: No, it’s not that. It’s what Major League Baseball is doing to the game. Who do these people think is paying the salaries? The insanity has to stop.
Me: Y—
Dad: Baseball used to be a common man’s game. The fans are paying for this. The fans can’t even afford to go to the games anymore. Pujols turns down 28 million dollars a year and there are many Americans out there who can’t even find a job. And 28 million a year is not enough for him. Really?
Me: Ri—
Dad: I’m done with it. I am going to straight college baseball. I am going back to T-Ball. That’s my game now. That’s where it’s true.
Me: You’re right. I’m with you.
Dad: Yeah, well what we really need to be concerned about it what’s happening in Egypt. You know, Iran is provoking Israel by sailing some warships through the Suez Canal.
Me: Oh, really?
Dad: Yeah, a loaf of bread will cost a day’s wage. Not to sound all doomsday or anything. But we’re not headed in a good direction.
((Pause))
Dad: We have to just trust in the Lord.
. . .
Thoughts on Family Worship
Joel Beeke is giving a wonderful message on leading family worship. And yet the more that I receive this exhortation the more I am beginning to wonder how our views of the covenant affect such family worship.
Technically, family worship at this point in my house could exist between my wife and I, but not our children. My children are not yet members of the covenant community. They have not yet been united to Christ by faith (but may it be one day, amen).
Family worship for us is more like an evangelistic service (which every ‘service’ should be). My task is not simply to model for my children how worship looks, but to lovingly and continually (not just at set times throughout the day) speak into their lives the basis of worship—the death and resurrection of Christ for all those who embrace him by faith. So at this point in our home I think it’s right to say: I do family worship with my wife and catechesis with my children, in hope.
What If Not My Children…
Adam loved his kids Cain and Abel. Lamech loved his other sons and daughters. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Abraham loved Ishmael and Issac. Isaac loved Jacob and Esau.
It was Abel, not Cain. Noah, not the others. Abraham was called out. Issac was the son of promise. Jacob was the one.
The unfolding storyline of the Bible heralds the electing love of the LORD. This is not an issue to shirk away. It is undeniable. It is even thematic. But how should I view the possibility that my children are not elected to salvation?
This is a difficult question. I should view it painfully, humbly, and gratefully:
I should view it painfully because I love my children and I do not want to see them suffer any harm. I love them and I want to protect them.
I should view it humbly because punishment for sin is a punishment that we all should have to pay. My children are guilty. They have sinned against God. The role of creature to Creator supersedes the role of child to parent.
I should view it gratefully because the punishment I should pay has already been paid for me by Jesus Christ on the cross. I should be grateful because he has given children to me as my children–children of parents who embrace the gospel by faith. This is the reality that we live in. I don’t base my theology on the possible-would be-alternative realities. ‘God could do this, he could do that, etc.’ No, no—my theology is based on revelation, what God has done and said he would do, testified to in the Holy Scripture and accomplished in my own life.
God has saved me and my wife. God has given us children. God is making it so that my children hear the gospel all the time from parents who jovially embrace it as the best news in the universe. God has made it–predestined it–that my children have parents who believe the gospel and daily pray that they will believe it too. It did not have to be this way. But this is the way that God has made it. This is the right note that I think paedobaptists and more covenantal perspectives hit on. My children have already received a blessed privilege and everything in reality suggests that they will put their faith in Jesus just like their parents have and continually pray that they will. Everything in this reality suggests that Jesus atoned for their sins on the cross just as he atoned for mine.
Father, please lavish upon my children the grace to worship by the Holy Spirit, glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. Amen.
