Monday, January 7, 2013

Happy New Year 2014

Happy New Year to everyone.

It has been awhile since my last post. We spent the Christmas holiday on vacation cruising the Bahamas on the Dream from Disney Cruise Lines. What a wonderful week on board this beautiful ship. Two days on their private, sun drenched island is just not enough. Disney is truly the way to sail the Seven Seas with children.

 Today I picked up my reading of the book of Genesis chapter 6 verses 5-6. 5: The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. 6: So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. (NLT)

 What made me stop to think deeply about this verse was the last line: "It broke his heart." Rather than passing over that line quickly, I followed up with a verse study from Matthew Henry's Commentary in which he states: "Here is, I. God's resentment of man's wickedness. He did not see it as an unconcerned spectator, but as one injured and affronted by it. He saw it as a tender father sees the folly and stubbornness of a rebellious and disobedient child, which not only angers him, but grieves him."

 Taken together, "It broke his heart" and "but grieves him" hit me right in my own heart. It made me think about my own children. That not only am I their parent, but I'm still a child to and of God. For the first time, I see that He looks at me the same way I look at them. He sees both the beauty and disappointments in me that I see in them and sometimes feel in their actions. His heart wants what my heart wants. He wants his children (me) to be as righteous and obedient as I want my own.

 So where does this leave me tonight? First, it leaves me with a sense of sorrow for some of the ways I've lived and the disappointments I've brought to Him. Second, it gives me a new perspective on how I need to move forward in His heart. I know the past cannot be changed, but in all that I do henceforth, it must be done without causing disappointment in His eyes.

 I have always been proud to be my father's son. He was everything I wanted to be when I grew up. He was the kindest man I've ever known. There was never any doubt that on the day I married he would be my best man. He left this world three years ago. Today I wear his wedding ring upon my finger. I look at it and know all that he made it stand for. What I have to be, to be worthy of wearing his life. If I can live my life right, that day will come when my son looks at me the way I looked at his grandfather. And I will not only be a joyous man, but I will know that I have made both my father and God neither angry nor grievous.

 This is going to be hard work.