Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

Over the summer school breaks out and life moves from the regular rhythm of learning into holiday mode.  For my kids this has meant summer classes, a trip to Grandma’s in Scotland, visiting their new home in the Netherlands, and a short vacation in Vienna.  A pretty normal summer for us - which makes us a strange family - but on the other hand it all seems normal to us and I spent half my time this summer trying to entertain my kids because they were “bored”. 

But, on the other hand, this is not a normal summer.  We have had the usual complaints of boredom from our youngest who doesn’t like being away from the discipline of learning and school.  Weird kid.  Yet, in the back of her mind, she knows that a new school is coming and that will present its own challenges.  With my sixteen year old the challenge of a new school is not lodged in some recess of the mind but is front and centre.  As she puts it, “It will be a nightmare”. 

As parents we know a couple of things they don’t yet.  First, we know that we will be there for them.  The reality of fanmily is that it is often taken for granted.  And, second, we know that God goes ahead of us preparing our way and making for us a home and a church family.  Already there are friends waiting for my children and a home which honors God to support them.  Our faith tells us that in every city in the world there are those who are faithful.  In these early years the girls do not know these certainties but they will see the power of them in the future. 

It is a different matter for my son who heads off to college.  As we move in the direction of Europe he will stay in the US and attend engineering school.  This distance scares the parents and excites the child.  We want our son to stay in the world of parental certainties longer but he knows that the time for that is over.  And we know it too even if it makes it no easier to let him go.

When my son reaches college he will be faced with some pretty big choices.  Is he ready?  I am certain he is not - he is certain that he is.  I am biased and so is he.  Yet the truth will come out soon and as I let him go I have only the promises of his baptism to reassure me (because his dress sense and taste in music surely does not).  At baptism we gave up our son to God and claimed His covenant promise that he had called my son by name and that forever he would be in his care.  As my son starts engineering school I have never in my life clung more closely to that promise.  Anyone who has ever parented a teenager knows that depending on their choices is a fools errand.  Which leaves me clinging to the promise of God which, probably, is where I should have been all along.