WARNING: Feeling fairly philosophical – this may get a bit prose-y  :-).
My twin daughters are just past 2 years old. They have another sister or maybe a brother joining them next year. And I’ve been thinking about what I will tell them.
About what? About everything. About life and death and pain and joy and hope and despair and the meaning of it all. Life comes comes at you pretty fast (thank your Ferris Bueller). It’s easy in the middle of being a husband and an employee and a father and a son and a citizen and another face on the planet to forget that we are written into the great Story of time. And it can’t be told without us.
Before I was a father, I was a son – not just a son of my father on earth but a son born of the Spirit, born into the world, thrust into the narrative, sent to kick and scream and fight and grow and hurt and heal and learn. And all of it for a reason. Everything good and bad and in between designed to lead me to one inescapable conclusion: I was born on purpose.
Right here, right now, I was intended to be. And I was intended to be more than the sum of my parts, more than is possible in the physical, more than the world I was born into says is the height of my potential. Because I am meant to reach beyond myself.
My life has been orchestrated so I would learn the truth – everything is not as it once was, but it will be made right again. I was born into the space between perfection and restoration, between a garden and a city, between Heaven and Hell. And once you know, you understand why reality doesn’t ever feel quite right – it wasn’t meant to be this way. But everything that is broken will be made whole. And in the in-between, there is a way to live…beyond. Beyond the ordinary. Beyond the average. Beyond the possible. Beyond.
Not because I am anything, but because there was born into our Story a hero. He did not fail like we do. He did not stumble like we do. He did not give up like we do. He lived, He bled, He died, He lived again,  and He won our freedom. He made us see the life we had always hoped for. And then He gave us the very same power – to help others see.
To see that at the end of yourself is the beginning of wisdom. The first are last, the last first, and God’s best friends are thieves and whores. The ability to see beyond today into forever, to live as a man or woman of your time, but speak words that echo in eternity.
That’s what I will tell them. That they are daughters (and maybe a son :-)) of the greatest King. They have been given to me long enough to show them the truth, to awaken their hearts to pulse of the eternal in the everyday, and then to send them out to fulfill their destiny – to light up the darkness.
I will tell them that when we fold our hands and speak into the sky, the ears that heard the birth of a billion stars hear us, and the Father of the Universe answers if we just believe. I will tell them that the ancient words from our favorite book are more than stories or good advice – they are life itself, and tell us who we really are.
I will tell them everything beautiful and wonderful and pure and true is a gift to be treasured, given to show us the tiniest glimpse of the world to come. I will tell them that pain and suffering and disease and despair are only ours for today, and that they, like the world around us, are passing away. I will tell them that many have gone before us, and they have suffered too. And a few endured, and were found worthy of their great calling, and became heroes, and so can they.
I will tell them I love them, but there is One who loves them more, and that He will one day gather them up, and give them new names, and we will always be together, and death will be dead, and everything will be new, and that we are as sure that day is coming as we are sure that tomorrow the sun will rise.
I will tell them this in quiet moments before bed and long walks and sunday services. But I will also tell them when I get up, when I go to sleep, when I work and pray and love and read and choose and succeed and struggle and repent and walk the planet for my brief moments. I will tell them when I know they are watching, and when I think they are not.
I will tell them their mother and I dreamed of them for a decade, but their Father planned them before there was Time. Every hair on their head, every day of their life, woven into the great fabric of His Story, so they never have to feel alone. Because they never have been, and they never will be.
That’s what I will tell them.
God, help me.
