Baccalaureate musings

Deuteronomy 29:16-19 (NIV)

You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.

When such a person hears the words of this oath and they invoke a blessing on themselves, thinking, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.

For some reason I can happily watch as my five-year-old “graduates” from preschool without feeling overwhelmingly nostalgic. But sitting in church today during Baccalaureate Sunday, when we honored outgoing high school seniors, had me wrapped up in my own memories.

The five-year-old is the middle child, which means I’ve sent one to kindergarten before, and will do so twice more. That made me no less happy to celebrate, but it does temper the “my baby is getting so big!” wave of emotions. I got to know a few members of this high school class during their freshman year when I stepped in to fill a void in the confirmation leadership team. To see those same students standing before the congregation today, just a few years later, seemed deeply significant — even though I actually had very little to do with any of them during the rest of their high school career.

Adding layers to my sentiment is knowing I once was figuratively in their shoes, but literally in the same physical place. The church bulletin listed names of students who earned one of our congregation’s scholarships, and it was quite easy to picture those of my vintage accepting their awards. Then one of the pastors read a poem before the traditional distribution of the pocket crosses to each member of the graduating class.

This brought up two very specific, personal memories. One was the day I accepted my own pocket cross. Following the service, in the church basement, my grandfather (in town for graduation weekend) showed me a silver coin my grandmother gave him on their wedding day. He claimed to have kept it in his pocket ever since, which would explain why it was as smooth as a stone undisturbed for years at the river’s edge.

I took to keeping my pocket cross in my wallet, and did so every day for a little more than five years. I replaced it nearly eleven years ago with a cross Kristie gave me on our wedding day. That was the second memory I conjured today. My wedding day, much like college or high school graduation, is one of the few times in life where I truly felt I was standing firmly where I wanted to be, gazing out toward whatever the future might hold.

But of those three dates, never did I feel more full of myself than at the time of high school graduation. I was very confident about how I’d be carrying myself in college, what my life would look like to others and how I’d be able to expertly juggle making new friends while keeping the old. I knew what role faith and church would play in my daily business. I had questions, sure. And I was preemptively nostalgic for the friends I’d be leaving behind, not to mention overly dramatic and (huge shocker) prone to writing at length about the experience as if we were the only teens ever set loose from high school, that ours was the only group of friends ever split up to enroll in a variety of universities.

College graduation is different. Anyone who has lived in a dorm learns quickly the different nature of the bond between college friends and high school pals. Most people leave college quickly enough to still have vivid memories of all the promises made at high school graduation and broken a few months later. Anyone not going off to grad school quickly learns how easy it was to transition from high school to college when the present option is the actual Real World of jobs, apartments and making your own food every day.

So indeed there is something special about leaving high school. In addition to seeing the kids at church today, I recently followed along via social media as the students I met as fourth-graders (in our old church, two life phases ago) also graduated this year. Seeing all of these young people in mortarboards doesn’t exactly make me feel old, but it does remind me of the inevitability of time.

My prayer for all of these young people is to be self confident, but not to persist in going their own way when God is clearly trying to lead them in a different direction. There are most definitely times to stand up for what you believe, but those confrontations are best left to the interpersonal realm. Insisting I know more about life’s direction than what God has obviously set forth has been a losing proposition over and again.

I could rack up a list of personal experiences, but that would feed the lie that my history is more significant than anyone else’s, or that it’s possible to truly learn from another person’s mistakes. It seems falling over and getting back up are essential to growth and development, and while I pray these graduates, and also my own children, are spared serious pain and heartbreak, I also know it’s not my position to guard any of them fully from what the world might bring.

We also this morning sang the hymn from which this project takes its name. (At least everyone else did, I was running late and dropping kids in the nursery and Sunday school.) It is, as I have noted, my college hymn, and for lack of a better conclusion to this entry, I offer the hymn’s final verse that wanders in and out of my mind on a near-daily basis:

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while life shall last,
And our eternal home.

A prayer for June 9:

Lord, I hope I never get too full of myself, never forget the importance of humility, never decide I’m the captain and refuse to seek direction. I pray not just for your guidance, but to continually break down the walls I build and enable me to see clearly the path you intend me to follow. Help me as my children grow to walk the line between careful concern and overprotection. Let me be ever mindful that experience is my teacher, not theirs. And keep me always under your watchful eye, my help and hope as long as I breathe. Amen.

'Follow justice and justice alone'

Deuteronomy 16:18-20 (NIV)

Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every town the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people fairly. Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.

“Follow justice and justice alone.” That is a strong command and some seriously valuable advice. It seems as clear as can be — yet I still struggle with applying it to daily life.

My first thought is of lyrics from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” specifically the words Pilate speaks to Jesus during the trial:

What is truth?
Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths
Are mine the same as yours?

The problem with following justice alone is humans have done a pretty good job of corrupting the notion. Even if you don’t bring religion into the arena there’s enough discord in the political realm and legal system to prove just how muddy the water has become. Thinking about it through the filter of faith makes it even more complicated given the widespread disagreement in exactly how we’re supposed to read what God says about being good to one another. Heck, we’re smart enough to realize the people in the pew next to us on Sunday might not see the world in exactly the same fashion, let alone the folks from the church down the street, the temple across town and so on.

This is not an uncommon theme. I always default to a similar position: trying my best to let God define for me what God means and block out human opinions. Then follow up by living life according to what I believe to be God’s will and some day, stand before Him in judgment and say, more or less, “I did what I thought was right.” I don’t have any better approach, and I don’t have any better advice for my kids.

I would be deeply honored if any of my children became known as followers of or crusaders for justice. There is far too much injustice in the world — socially, racially, financially or in terms of opportunity, access, respect and so on — the list of things that are fair would be pitifully small stood next to a list of things that are unfair. It’s not that the eyes of the wise have been blinded or the words of the innocent twisted, it’s that there aren’t enough people willing to pursue justice to the ends of the Earth.

I should know. I’m certainly not following this edict. Pretending I were would be a bigger problem because then I’d be lying about it to boot. I don’t always pursue justice as it relates to my own life, because sometimes just accepting a raw deal is easier than making a fuss, and I am ashamed to think of the number of times I’ve sat passively when perhaps speaking or acting might have made an improvement in some small corner of the human race.

Earlier I wrote how difficult it is to fully know what God wants. Yet doing what God wants can be an even greater challenge because it so often directly conflicts with what I want — which many times is just to be left alone, unnoticed, fading into the background with the other hundreds of millions of people in the country. But God doesn’t call me to walk that path. I wish I was a stronger person. I admire greatly those who do what I seem unable or unwilling to try.

Unfortunately, that also seems to be a recurring theme. Hopefully I’ll have tomorrow to try to get things right.

A prayer for June 6:

Lord, I fear this is a common prayer because of my own shortcoming. I come asking you to show me injustice in the world, then give me the strength to do what it takes to correct the problem. Do not let me retreat into myself and pass by without trying to take a stand. I want this world to be a better place for my children than it is for me. I want to make a difference here in gratitude for your love and grace. I say these things, now I need to do these things, because no one else will do them for me. Lead me, God, and I will follow to the best of my ability. Amen.

Making good on our deal

Deuteronomy 11:13-19 (NIV)

So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today — to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul — then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you. Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

The plan was simple: when Jack was ready to leave, we would leave — with no objections from me. The day was Saturday. The event was the annual Cub Scout graduation campout a few miles northwest of our house. The challenge was a particularly foreboding forecast calling for strong thunderstorms at various points of the day and night.

I couldn’t decide which of three outcomes had me more fearful: a soaking wet tent, a soaking wet Jack or the possibility of planning to skip the camping part altogether only to have the storms pass us by. So we talked about it with Jack and agreed on a plan: no tents, but we could stay as late as he wanted and come back early the next morning for breakfast. Happily, he was able to see the logic and signed off on the proposal. He has never been a big fan of getting wet unless it’s completely on his own terms, and his agreement got me off the hook in terms of horsing around trying to sleep outside in a monsoon.

The forecast said it was supposed to be storming when we woke up Saturday — it was calm and beautiful. The forecast said it was supposed to storm heavily between noon and one, when folks were supposed to be pitching tents — it was a bit breezy and slightly overcast, but no precipitation. The forecast said it was supposed to storm again around 6 p.m. — and that, to some relief, is when the skies finally opened.

I would have been a bit more relieved by the rain had it not arrived once I’d figured it wouldn’t and was halfway across the camp from the main shelter. Fortunately the thick tree canopy kept me mostly dry. I got back to the shelter to see nearly every Scout, parent and sibling already under cover.

At the time, we should have been getting on dress uniforms and heading over to the fire bowl for the graduation events, painfully unfunny skits made enjoyable only by the cute earnestness of the performers and some low-grade pyrotechnics that make grade school boys “ooh” and “aah.” Instead, the leaders got all the graduation gear unpacked and proceeded to begin the ceremony.

But Jack was done. He’d decided it was time to leave, even though the campfire was going to be the highlight of his day. The rain let up enough where he felt an umbrella would keep him substantially dry on our trek back to the car, and he knew if we hurried he wouldn’t have to be stuck outside if the rain picked back up or, worse, lighting and thunder got involved.

For a few seconds I hesitated. I was hoping to see a smile on his face as he advanced ranks and accept his new neckerchief. But I remembered the deal: We’d stay as long as he wanted to. Although I made the deal as a way to let him know we could stay out way past dark, past even his abnormal bedtime, he was applying the rules fairly: He wanted out, and I was not going to force him to stay there if it meant breaking our deal.

We got up early the next morning (before 7 a.m.) and headed back to camp — it’s about a 15-minute drive at that time of day. Only Jack could not eat and be satisfied because, unlike last year, there was no hot chocolate, no helpful Boy Scouts cooking pancakes. There were bagels and granola bars and oatmeal. These are not foods Jack likes. He quickly invoked his “whenever I want to leave” clause, and I relented.

So off we went to Golden Corral, where the biggest headache was the ice cream machine spitting out chocolate instead of vanilla and the cotton candy being wet. (Why the full dessert bar is open at 8 a.m. during a breakfast buffet is beyond me.) But he handled it more or less in stride, a skill I’m happy to see him develop. After a slower-than-usual start from Charlie and Max, we actually went on to have a wonderful family Sunday.

All in all, I was proud of the kid. I know the weekend didn’t work out as he planned. He had a ton of fun during his first campout this time last year, so it was disappointing we weren’t able to fully revisit the joy. But in a way, I think he learned more this time than last time by overcoming the adversity. And he and I had a few decent talks over our brief time together, which is always a delight.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a point of thanking him for the weekend, not just his good choices but also for including me in his activity. It won’t be the kind of heavy faith talk referenced in the verses from Deuteronomy, but hopefully it can help us continue building a relationship that includes talking about things I want to discuss and not just the latest Wii game or Nook app.

It’s a great deal of fun to spend time with him when he’s willing to communicate and involve me in the activity of the hour. As my oldest, he’ll always be opening my eyes to new parenting experiences. As such, I need to make sure I’m ever vigilant for the chance to learn something new. He’s always been a great teacher to me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to make him understand just how important that’s been over the years.

A prayer for June 3:

Lord, thank you for a special weekend with my son. It might not have gone according to our initial plans, but we enjoyed our time together anyway. Please help me be open to opportunities for individual connections with each of my children, and also to help us as parents teach them about the importance of being together as a family, in groups or as a whole. We’re blessed with so much, God, I hope I can show my kids just how wonderful life is when your love is at the center. Amen.

I saw it with my own eyes

Deuteronomy 11:1-7 (NIV)

Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done.

Thankfully, I’ve never been enslaved in Egypt. Chances are pretty good I never will be. Nor is it likely I will wander the wilderness for forty years, but I suppose anything’s possible. But still I can take away at least two lessons from this part of Deuteronomy, which I’ve found gets something of a bad rap among it’s Old Testament colleagues.

The first lesson is the importance of repeating the stories of the faithful throughout the generations. I’ll admit it takes a substantial leap of faith to accept the “Bible stories” we have today are faithfully rendered versions of eyewitness accounts going back thousands of years. But if people of faith don’t have any connection to the history of their own tradition, then in what exactly do they believe? For Christians, especially, it is important to understand everything that led up to God’s decision to send Jesus to live as a human.

The second lesson, a bit more micro than macro, is how this might affect me and my kids individually — or any parent and offspring, for that matter. By glossing over the “works cited” portion of God’s persuasive essay, it boils down thusly: “Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God … It was not your children who saw what he did for you … But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done.”

God did not deliver me personally from Egypt. But I have felt a divine influence in my life, felt guided by the Lord at times, comforted at others, and am fairly certain I am in a far better place in life because of faith and the people I am fortunate to call my friends and family. There were plenty of chances for me to chart a different course, but nothing else ever felt as right, and I won’t consider that to be coincidental.

But that’s me and my life. My kids don’t know how all of this played out in my life, and they won’t unless I tell them. Ideally they’ll also have their own stories worth repeating some day, but I understand it starts with me. And I accept that responsibility as part of the job of raising children. I can focus on keeping them healthy and out of prison while graduating high school on time, but to me that’s the bare minimum. I feel called to do more — and not just to raise “good kids,” but to raise kids who have a deep understanding of how and why to be a good citizen of the planet and a good member of humanity.

No big, new revelations here tonight, but it’s nice every so often to get poked in the side and told again what should already be obvious. “It was not your children who saw … it was your own eyes.” So get out there and tell them your story! I needed the reminder.

A prayer for June 2:

Lord, today I am thankful for a weekend spent sharing the experiences of youth with my kids. It was a perfect reminder that nothing is as important as the time I have to help them grow into strong young men. I thank you also for reminding me how important it is to be not just a good role model, but to feel comfortable talking to them about how I see the world. Please give me the strength to share with them honestly, the patience to hear and respond to their questions and the wisdom to speak in words they will understand and use to grow in your love. Amen.

Advice for a day — or a lifetime

Deuteronomy 4:39-40 (NIV)

Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.

Tomorrow is the last day of third grade. Jack thinks he still has class on Monday, but I don’t have any supporting evidence. I suppose we’ll find out definitively based on how much stuff he brings home tomorrow. We know for sure preschool is over for Max since he hasn’t had to go for the last two weeks. I would love Charlie to graduate form the toilet training academy, but he’s opted for a deferred enrollment. Baby comes in October, champ. I only change one kid’s diapers at a time.

As usual, the end of the school year signals a sea of change in our family dynamic. There’s less urgency before bedtime and no rushing out the door in the morning (both of which make it even harder to get to church on time each Sunday). The grocery bills go up as we have a third grazer on the premises at all times, and more hours spent playing outdoors don’t cut back on the eating — they just leave a bag of Goldfish on the driveway and get a dirty handful whenever the mood strikes.

Our changes, though, are not incredibly significant. Despite starting at a new building, fourth grade won’t be all that much different from third. Kindergarten will be new for Max but old hat for the family. And that new baby in October? A change to be sure, but it’s several months away. And it’s not like we’ve never lived with a new baby in the house.

Still, the end of school and start of summer forces me to confront the reality of my kids growing up, slowly but surely. Sometimes it still staggers me to realize Max is now older than Jack was when we first moved here four years ago. Nearly every day Charlie wears an outfit I closely associate with one of his older brothers. Time marches on. This truth is neither surprising nor overwhelming, but it was heavy on my mind when I read these verses from Deuteronomy.

The command at first seemed to me like the sort of thing that might be good to tell someone who is embarking on a new phase of life — perhaps written by hand on a nice piece of stationery to kept at the ready for when the going gets tough and the tough needs a bit of help to get going. It may well serve that purpose one day for me as it relates to my kids, though in the time I’ve been working on this project I’ve come up with several good examples such that it will be a challenge to pick a favorite.

But as I read them over and again, I realize these verses fit neatly into another collection that’s been picking up steam over the last 13 or so months: nuggets I really ought to read and reflect on regularly — weekly, perhaps, if not more frequently. All I really want in this world is for life to go well with me and for my children. It appears that’s what God wants for us as well. For everyone, really. It shouldn’t be so hard to get along with one another, life shouldn’t be filled with as much stress as we’ve put upon ourselves as a culture.

But it is hard. Life is filled with stress. My hope is in the Lord and nowhere else. So far, that’s been more than enough to get by.

A prayer for May 30:

Lord, I acknowledge you this day and every day as my creator, my redeemer, my hope and my strength. You alone can give me a peace that defies logic. Only you can forgive my sins, which are many. I can do my best to obey your decrees and commands, but I will always need your love to carry me all the way back to you, where I truly belong. Please don’t ever let me go. Amen.

On remembering a lesson once it's learned

Deuteronomy 4:9 (NIV)

Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

One of the well-known phenomena of the junior high or high school youth group experience is the way retreats or mission trips inflame student passions for faith and living a Godly life, only for the emotions to dissipate fairly quickly upon getting home and back to school, if not on the return bus trip.

I would like to think the important life lessons I’ve learned in adulthood are not so fleeting, that I’ve actually been permanently changed for the better over the course of the last decade or so. But to be honest, there certainly are things I have seen and forgotten or lessons that have faded from my heart. I’d make a quick list of the bigger ones, but it’s hard to itemize all the things no longer in my memory bank.

It would be simpler, then, to collect the wisdom I’ve gained from my life’s experiences that still rests in a corner of my mind, able to leap to the forefront when a relevant situation arises. But it’s late on the Monday of a holiday weekend and my brain isn’t quite in that kind of place at the moment.

Each year on Jack’s birthday I write a newspaper column about the lessons I’ve learned in the preceding year, a tradition I started just a few days after he was born. But the vast majority of those bullet points are related to the day in, day out lessons of parenthood, and specifically in being his parent, which is by nature a unique experience, even compared to either of his brothers. Each kid is capable of teaching me widely different lessons regardless of their age or developmental stages.

Part of the reason I keep at this writing project past its one-year benchmark goal is so, on the odd occasion I do have an experience worth remembering and later passing on to my children and their (hypothetical) children, I’ve got an outlet to log and save it for later. Some days I come to an understanding while I’m writing, but there are times when the stereotypical “aha moment” happens during the day, and I know that night I can put finger to keyboard and, if for no one else, convey my lesson in a format that might serve me well days, weeks or months down the road.

But the verse in question is not asking for me to create a spiritual time capsule. These lessons are not relics to be accessed on some distant future date. They are supposed to actually change the way I see the world and how I think, act and speak. I’m to be taught and then to live as an educated guy, keeping these truths relevant and evident each day. That’s a far taller task, and one I’m sad to admit I frequently fail to fully complete.

Much like forgetting the name of the 14th vice president or the purpose of the 24th amendment, I am just too good at learning an important truth about myself or the world, then eventually carrying on as if I’d never been taught in the first place. I just need to get better, to actually change instead of simply saying I am or feeling it’s true. After all, if I’m not actually learning anything from life, what kind of teacher can my children expect me to be?

A prayer for May 27:

Lord, thank you for continuing to teach me, day in and day out, about what it means to live in faith. Your patience with me is astounding. I know there are so many times it seems I’m refusing to accept what I know to be true, or simply ignoring something plainly in front of my face. I don’t want to be so stubborn or blind, and I am trying to chip away at those tendencies and give myself fully to your will. Please don’t give up on me. My hope is in you. Amen.

The pitfalls of discipline

Deuteronomy 8:5 (NIV)

Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.

Surely the point of this verse is to remind humans of their need to be humble before God. In context of the larger passage (subtitled “Do Not Forget the Lord,”), God reminds the people how He led them through the wilderness for 40 years, causing them to be hungry and then feeding them with manna. The next verse continues the theme: “Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him.”

Those are very good things for me to keep in mind. I believe very much in the important of humility, even if I’m not always great about putting it into practice. I want to be held accountable before God, though I know I am far from perfect. I don’t have anything close to the experience of 40 years in the wilderness, yet I retain a strong sense that God provides, even at times when I don’t understand or appreciate what I truly need.

That said, reading this verse today I am inclined to invert the meaning. I do believe God disciplines me. I know I try to discipline my sons. But my worry is about the manner in which I discipline. I trust God is and will be eternally fair with me, employing wisdom far beyond anything I can imagine. I do not, however, trust myself to be as good a disciplinarian with my kids as God is with me.

And yet I can’t shy away from the responsibility of setting rules, enforcing penalties and trying my best to use my parental authority to guide my children safely into responsible adulthood. It hurts me to think there are times when my heavy-handedness is doing more harm than good, or that I might be looking the other way when it would be far better to assert myself. With three kids, there are multiple chances every day to make good and bad choices when it comes to discipline — and the fear of constantly making the wrong choices can have a paralyzing effect.

I tend to think my parents did a pretty good job with me and my siblings, and I suppose when they started they didn’t have much more to go on than we did in terms of experience. Surely the house rules they grew up with affected their disciplinary style, and some of that continues to filter through generations. I suppose for better and for worse, depending on the family and the desire (or lack thereof) to continue successful strategies and consciously avoid flaws and missteps.

I will forever question if I’m the kind of parent God calls me to be, and I’ll know I’m not measuring of to a standard of perfection. But unlike a teacher who hands out a test and then waits to grade the completed papers, God is alongside me each step of the way, offering guidance, insight, direction and hope. It falls to me to take advantage of that divine resource, and further to not just try my best and seek God’s approval but to put God at the center of the process. If I can do a better job of ceding control, such that I am a channel for God’s love instead of a human impediment, then certainly our whole family will benefit.

As usual, easier said than done. But saying it is the first step. Without a plan, I’m totally lost. God is my refuge, my strength and my guide. Together we can do this thing the right way.

A prayer for May 6:

Lord, sometimes this parenting business is simply terrifying. I worry the things I do or say will cause damage far beyond what I control. I need you every hour to help me make good choices, exercise sound judgment and be as fair with my children as possible. I don’t trust myself to do it alone, I depend on your guidance, your calming presence in my life and the hope your love and grace provide. Help me be at my best for the people I love most. Amen.

'Consider the generations long past'

Deuteronomy 32:7 (NIV)

Remember the days of old;
   consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
   your elders, and they will explain to you.

One thing I most certainly want to do when the kids get old enough to understand is make sure they spend time with their grandparents learning about the older generations of our families. We don’t have any especially significant stories or famous relatives, but there are plenty of unique personalities, individual quirks and memorable anecdotes that constitute portions of our particular heritage.

I’m sure I wasn’t always the best at caring about my ancestors. And we’re not even talking about digging through genealogy records — one of my grandmother’s favorite hobbies — I simply mean keeping straight the names and spouses of my grandfather’s seven siblings or any more than essential details about my mom’s parents in their youth. That I know even less about my great grandparents is disappointing, and surely my own fault. I feel worse about it as the oldest child, therefore having the best chance to meet and know the most relatives.

This kind of intergenerational communication is going to be even more important as our society continues to rapidly change. I still get a kick out of my dad’s stories about growing up in rural Northwestern Illinois in the 1950s and 1960s when in-home telephones were a new development, let alone the advent of television and radio. Thinking about all of the amazing technology my kids will consider facts of life and contrasting that with the way of the world when my grandparents were kids in the 1920s and 1930s — it’s simply astounding.

Consider the world I was born into in 1979. It wasn’t really that much different, at least from a “conveniences of home” standpoint, than the one my parents entered in 1952 and 1953. In fact, save for the advent of the home computer and the early days of the Internet and cell phones, the world Jack arrived in back in 2004 seems closer to 1979 than it does to Charlie’s birth in 2011.

Sure, we had a TV in the recovery room after Jack was born. But I’d borrowed a cell phone from the newspaper. No one had a laptop, and if we did it’s not as if the hospital had Internet access for patient rooms. We had a 35mm film camera and an old Polaroid. But fast forward seven years and we were waiting for Charlie, sending text messages and emails to friends and family members, taking digital photos and putting them online immediately, all from the hospital. I’m not sure I took the time to save the newspaper from the day he was born — I can always just download a PDF version, right?

Of course technology isn’t the only thing that changes. It would blow Jack’s mind to hear about how school worked when my dad was in third grade, and even more so the experience for his parents. Charlie was born 111 years after my great-grandmother — a proud, wonderful woman who lived into her early 90s (and my sophomore year in high school). There’s so much my kids will be able to learn about culture, society and family traditions some day just by listening to stories from my parents and their siblings, looking over old family photos as still images come to life with each narrative.

In addition to my duty to make sure my kids learn about their own heritage is my responsibility to take pictures and videos of these boys who one day might be the parents, grandparents or great-grandparents sharing their stories of growing up in the early days of the 21st century, or maybe regaling some young person born in 2079 with tales they heard about people who lived through crucial moments of world history.

We also can pass down our faith traditions, which is something I certainly hope to do as well. My mom and I share a great love of classic hymns, especially those played on a powerful organ while sung by a mighty choir and congregation. That we have a chance to expose the boys to those experiences is a great gift, as is the chance to help them establish their own worship traditions.

I don’t want faith to be something they simply inherit, like a sweet tooth or inability to grow facial hair, because it won’t mean anything to them unless they make it their own. However, if they hear stories about the generations before them who made faith, family, church and worship the center of their lives, maybe they’ll appreciate how a strong belief system is bigger than one person, one tribulation, one relationship. It’s part of the fabric of our history — the core component, in fact.

Consider the generations long past indeed. I try to do so myself, and my life has been richer for the effort.

A prayer for May 3:

Lord, tonight I am thankful for the family members who have come before me, the spectacular series of events over the generations that led to my existence and that of my wonderful wife. I feel so blessed to have not only my own family for which to be grateful but hers as well. I hope our children will one day understand how many loving people are in their world and how lucky they are to have the chance to grow up in this generation and continue the legacy of those gone before. Please help us all to always remember your place at the center of our daily family life. Amen.

Cause and effect

Deuteronomy 8:10-18 (NIV)

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

In the last few days, Jack has had a crash course lesson in cause and effect. Not that we haven’t tried to impart such wisdom earlier, of course, but it really seemed to crystallize in the last 30 hours or so.

On Sunday, Jack got to go to my parents’ house after church. The rest of us came back down late in the afternoon for dinner. Near the end of the evening, Jack was getting dessert. I was walking through the house and noticed the light on in the office, which was empty, so I flipped it off. I thought nothing of it.

(Our children leave lights on and toilets unflushed wherever they go. If I charged them a quarter for every switch flipped and handle pushed I could outsource the job to someone who would do it for a dime and we’d both be able to retire early.)

Jack, on the other hand, thought a lot of it. Turns out he was headed back into the office with a bowl of ice cream. But instead of saying, “Dad, I’m going back in there!” or even “Hey!” he just grunted, put his ice cream down and stomped off into the basement. I turned the light back on for him and told him so, but it was no use. He pouted the rest of the time we were there, strongly resisted leaving, carried his sour attitude home and gave us a bunch of trouble about getting in the shower. En route to being forced to brush his teeth, he said a few choice words that cost him his screen time privileges for a week.

Yet through it all, Jack maintained the entire ordeal was my fault because I was the one who turned off the light. He refused to take ownership of anything — not a pattern of leaving lights on in vacant rooms all over the house, not refusing to explain his displeasure, not coming out of his funk in time to eat his dessert, not dragging his feet on the shower, not saying things he’d been warned not to say just a day before, nothing. By his logic, my one innocent mistake not only ruined his entire weekend but also gave him license to respond in the worst possible way.

I calmly explained to him, and later wrote out, how it was his decision to react poorly that led down the path of disappointment. I can admit making a mistake, but I’m not going to let him think another person’s error is a free ticket for him to carry on so rudely without repercussion. I’m sure my words fell on deaf ears and blind eyes, but I have got to keep trying to get through here. The world is going to forgive us all a fair amount of transgressions. But I’ve not met a successful adult who wasn’t willing to take at least a little blame when everyone can see where the fault lies.

His next lesson in cause and effect was a bit more practical. It came this afternoon at the dentist’s office, where he blatantly lied in answer to the “have you been brushing every day?” question. His response of “I missed a day or two” rang false the second the dentist saw the orange plaque on his lower teeth. As the dentist scraped away, Jack clenched his fists, tensed his legs and whined. Max, who had begged to come, said to me, under his breath, “is this really how Jack behaves at the dentist?” The dentist joined me in another calm explanation: If you really do brush your teeth every day, then you won’t be subject to all the scraping. Again, deaf ears I’m sure, but at least he didn’t have any cavities this time.

We had another kerfuffle right before bedtime tonight. Long story short, Jack was playing with a Charlie-sized toy. Charlie took exception and reacted the way two-year-olds do, and then Jack reacted the way two-year-olds do as well, which is not the desired outcome for someone who is almost nine. As all three kids got sent off to bed, Jack again tried to place the blame anywhere but on himself. He insisted he had a right to be angry.

You do have a right to be angry, I assured him, because he was right about that. He was playing with the toy first and, while he could have shared, he did not blatantly ask for Charlie to get mad at him. However, it is how he displayed that anger that led to the problem. Feel free to be angry, but don’t respond with immaturity and dangerous behavior. We keep reminding him if he doesn’t care for the punishments he should consider not causing the infractions in the first place. Yet his energy remains dedicated to explaining why he’s never at fault.

I’m in my early thirties and I’m sure I don’t always link cause and effect as well as I should. As good as I am in recognizing this (and other) shortcomings in my kids, I can be equally unable to identify them in myself. So while I will keep plugging away at trying to break through to Jack (some day he’ll understand it, or at least stop denying it, right?), I might also be well off to turn more of the focus inward to make sure I’m not overlooking my own giant stumbling blocks.

A prayer for February 18:

Lord, help me to pay more attention to the lessons I refuse to learn. It is wonderful to feel I might be growing and changing for the better, but I realize I’m probably overlooking certain mistakes I make so often I’ve almost assumed they’re part of the scenery. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Because of your power and your love, I have the ability to address all my challenges. You give me what I need to overcome. Be patient with me God, for I may be slow to adapt. But I want to make myself a better person, more worthy of you. Don’t ever give up on me. Amen.