ChosenRebel's Blog

Wednesday is for Prayer

My beautiful bride of 27 years and I are fast moving toward the land of “empty-nesters.”

I hate the term.

How could we ever be empty with the glorious treasures that God has given us in our children. They are such gifts, such enormous islands of light in a dark world. Our love for each of them, and now their spouses, moves dangerously close to idolatry and daily we remind ourselves that we will love them best only if we love them less than the Savior who redeemed us by living sinlessly among us, dying for us, and rising victoriously to announce the captives have been set free.

This year for Christmas, we were together “the marrieds” and “the single girl”.  It was a Christmas we will treasure the rest of our lives. Among the gifts, was a copy of a poem that young Marty wrote for us at Christmas the year before he married the lovely Anna.  This year he gave us a copy of it. Parents treasure everything their children give them. It’s in our DNA. But this one caught us both off guard. It told us prayers prayed from before they were each born and continued to this day, had been answered.

A faith had been caught. A Lord had been found. Christmas, real Christmas, would continue for another generation. May all your prayers for your children be answered and may you never grow weary in lifting them up to the throne of grace. Prayers for children are precious in the ear of God. Young Marty’s poem follows.

Homeschooled Understanding

This is not a poem that could thank you,
just an illustration of a camel passing through the head of a needle into open arms.

Arms that can no longer hold me up–’cause I’m too big now.
Even though your tongue is as strong as Egyptian pyramids.

I see a mown lawn
And a fixed bicycle
A pumped basketball
And a Bible with endless highlights
I hear a cough too familiar
Wrought from holding a village up with your voice
Words escaping like golden chariots of light on a hill.

And for the days the bear eats me*
And for the days he swallows me whole
There’s always a morning
When I can hear you forging that sword in a furnace of holy fire.

I smell an egg dish; that I don’t want to eat,
Made beautiful on once-a-year fine china
And an aroma of nameless perfume scenting winter coats.
I smell Christmas.
I feel a forgiving hand rubbing insecurities and flaws from my back
In a circular motion.
I feel a mouth
Open and close
On my cheek, a silent expression of the deepest feeling.
I can taste the word: heartfelt

This is not a poem that could thank you for putting a pencil in my hand
A blessing on my forehead
And for having a faith in a God that sometimes I can only see in you.

Lord, rescue our children by Your Word. Make Your Word live in us that they might never doubt Your greatness and that they might serve You all of their days. For Your glory and their eternal joy, I ask this for all the parents of all the children that you have entrusted to us. Oh God, let us not grow weary in praying for our children. Amen.