Friday Reflection

In lieu of an update – and no news is good news, seeing as we weren’t scheduled to see any doctors today – I thought I would share a snippet of a conversation Lisa and I had on the way to Cincinnati.

John Calvin said it well with these words: our hearts are idol factories. Because of our brokenness, we worship things other than God – and often it’s without even realizing it. So the question is not whether a person worships, but who or what a person worships. The worst part of it all is that the idols we worship tend to start healthy. For example, we’re called to be caretakers of the world, yet it’s easy to fall into the trap of worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. Or food; God gave it to us for our nourishment, yet we live to eat rather than eat to live. You could see how money or pets or sports – all things that can be good, healthy things – could also be distorted and turned into idols.

(This is where the conversation picks up) How ‘bout kids? More pointedly, are our own kids (born or unborn) idols in our lives? Where’s the line between loving them and worshiping them? Between making them a priority and putting them above all else?

I think those are questions every parent should ask; they are questions that are impossible to avoid in the middle of a storm like the one we’re going through.

Are we making these twins a higher priority than God right now? I don’t think so; in fact – if anything – we feel closer to God and His people now than on most “normal” days (perhaps tomorrow’s reflection will flesh this out in more detail). I think we’ve been seeking out God more for wisdom and peace, we’ve been praying more fervently than usual, and we’ve been ministered to by God’s Word more clearly. God is by far top priority through this all.

Then why so focused on this – what’s that all about? The obvious answer is that we have needed (and still need) to do everything we can to help these girls right now. There’s a small window for action, and we wanted to do something while we could.

But I think there’s something deeper to it.

Neal Plantinga – soon to be president emeritus of Calvin Seminary (which happens to be where I studied) – wrote the book on sin. No, literally, he wrote the book on sin. It’s called Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, and it’s a fantastic look at what we all want to ignore. One of the ways that he describes sin is “corruption.” Things aren’t what they should be; they’re distorted and marred.

And right now, we’re feeling the effects of a broken world.

At this point in life – married almost six years, two kids at home, and praying for two more on the way – there are handfuls of things that aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. We shouldn’t be – against our will – away from our kids for eight days. We shouldn’t be having concerns with the pregnancy. We shouldn’t be having prenatal surgery or echocardiograms or an MRI for unborn babies. These are the types of things that didn’t happen in Eden.

So we cry out – and you add your voices to ours – to the one True God. To the One who puts all other gods to shame. To the One who knows all too well what it is to be heartbroken for His Son’s pain.

And then we hope with faith for life the way it should be, taking heart from the glimpses we catch of it this side of heaven.

~Jeff