Tag Archives: family

Family Matters Most

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Yesterday was my daughter Evelyn’s 13th birthday, and I’m not kidding when I say she has been looking forward to the day for quite some time. Becoming a teenager is a memorable thing. It’s an even bigger deal for a girl who dearly loves her family and wants so much for them to share the moment with her.

Evelyn really is that kind of girl. If she is experiencing joy, she wants that same joy to be experienced by others. I think that’s one reason why she is so invested in her church family. She loves the Lord. He has blessed her through some pretty incredible challenges, and He’s done it in ways that have brought her tremendous joy. As a result, and firstly, she’s drawn toward being in worship with others in her church. What I mean is that even though she’s already in worship every Sunday, she also attends on Wednesdays—even though she doesn’t have to. When she was in midweek catechesis, she attended Wednesday evening worship by default because I brought her to school in the mornings, and then she’d stay through for her class, which happens right after evening worship. She’s confirmed now and no longer in midweek catechesis. But she still insists on staying with me all day to attend Wednesday evening worship. Secondly, she’s drawn toward making sure the place where worship happens is in good order—that the processional cross is in place, that the hymnals are straightened, that any scrap of out-of-place paper is removed. She wants the sacred spaces to be kept in a way that prevents others from being distracted from the joy God intends to give.

She’s also the kind of girl, as I said, who loves her immediate family—a family that, as the youngest in the bunch, she can see is beginning to spread its wings and fly in multiple directions, often making it difficult for everyone to be together. But she wants that togetherness. She so often wants nothing more than to have all of us in the same place at the same time. It bothers her when even one of us is missing. And rightfully so. Who wants to be apart from the ones they love the most? Not Evelyn. And her 13th birthday celebration all but guaranteed it. We’d all be there. And not only that, but we were all relatively commitment-free. She’d be able to spend the whole day at home with her family doing whatever she wanted, having set her sights on time with her siblings, the consumption of chili dogs (her requested meal), opening presents, and then plunging into some pie and ice cream a little later.

But then I got a call that threatened to jeopardize this greatest wish and a long-anticipated day.

The call came in on Thursday morning. I was asked to give the opening prayer at the Trump rally in Warren, Michigan, on Saturday afternoon. It was an honor to be asked, to be sure. It’s something that, if you say no, you never get asked again. I had a choice to make. I told the caller that I couldn’t say yes without checking on something else first, and I assured her I’d call her right back. As soon as I hung up, I called Jennifer. Like me, she knew the day belonged to Evelyn. With that, our conversation was brief. We agreed that while this was an incredible honor, whatever Evelyn preferred would determine my answer. She was most important to both of us, and quite simply, that was that.

I walked down to the school, peeked into Evelyn’s classroom, and motioned for her to join me in the hallway. Reminding her of something that needed no reminder—the arrival of her birthday in two days—I started to tell her about what I’d just been invited to do that same day. Before I could even begin to explain that she would have the final word and that I would be absolutely fine with saying no to the request, her eyes lit up, and she burst into, “Can I go with you?! Can I go?! Can I go?!” She took a quick breath and then, true to form, added, “Can we all go?! Can the whole family go?!”

“Of course, we can all go,” I said. “But it’s your birthday—and it’s an extra-special one. You’ve been looking forward to being home with the whole family and having an easy day. I want that to be what happens if that’s what you want. Whatever you want to do is what we’ll all do. Just know I intend to be with you on your 13th birthday. There’s absolutely no way I’d miss it.”

“Will I get to meet President Trump if I go?” she asked. “Can we all meet him together?” she continued, making sure the prospect of a unique birthday joy would be her family’s, too.

“Absolutely,” I said. “We’ll all meet the President together.”

“Really?!” she replied, sounding even more excited than before.

“Yes, really,” I said. “They’ll give our whole family special seats right up front. When it’s time, they’ll call me on stage to offer the prayer, and then sometime afterward, when President Trump arrives, they’ll come and get us and take us back to meet him before he goes up to speak. We’ll get to talk with him and take some pictures.”

“Oh, this is going to be the best birthday ever!” she exclaimed. “And we’ll all be together!”

And that’s pretty much where it ended. Evelyn gave me an incredibly tight hug, and then I shepherded her back to class. The rest is what it is. Walking back to my office, I called and said yes, even though I was fully prepared to say no and never to be asked again. With that, we all went together—sadly, except for Harrison. He had a very sore throat on Friday and felt terrible when he awoke on Saturday. He preferred to stay home and sleep. We all missed him, that’s for sure. Each of us said that more than once throughout the evening. Still, it was quite an eventful night. While waiting in the Green Room before my time on stage, I met and visited with a number of folks many of us only know from a distance—such as Mike Lindell and Margorie Taylor Green. One notable moment was spent with Dick Morris. Before the family and I were ushered back to meet the President, he leaned over to ask if I’d read Erik Metaxas’ book on Luther. I had. And so we talked somewhat superficially about its contents. Along the way, I mentioned Luther’s theology of the Two Kingdoms, and that led him to ask me to explain it. I did, and he seemed convinced. And why wouldn’t he? It is the best, most precise handling of biblical Church and State theology.

Still, and as Evelyn is likely to tell you with glee, the best moment for all of us is when she got a cheerful and welcoming “Happy Birthday, Evelyn!” from President Trump followed by a warm handshake and a few pictures together with her family.

Now, I suppose I felt moved to tell you about my initial interaction with Evelyn during school because it shaped what I would eventually say during the prayer before the more than 20,000 people in attendance. If you watched the broadcast, you’d remember that I prayed for many things—religious liberty and protection from unjust laws, courage among citizens, preservation of objective truth, an unraveling of the wickedness of abortion, and God’s mighty hand for crushing Proposal 3. I asked God for these things and more. But smack dab in the middle of visiting with these requests on paper, I was first moved to scribble that our gracious Lord would restore admiration for family. In essence, I asked that we, as a nation, would be reminded of just how wonderful the bond between a father, mother, and children truly is. I did this not only because I know very well the blessings that come from having a family of my own but because God is the generous architect of the human household, and He has put the estate of family in place as a fundamental underpinning for all societies of all time. When families break, communities get weaker. When families are redefined, institutions lose more of their grip on what is sure.

If a society is to endure, it must preserve families.

I’ve also written in other places that the human family forms the quintessential transmission lines for passing this knowledge along from one generation to the next. When families come undone, when these lines are torn down, again, societies lose touch with their very identities. Families are essential to a nation’s identity. Knowing this, if I can’t first choose my family over myself, I harm the ones I love and do my country and its future generations a terrible disservice. The decision to say yes or no to a request like this might not appear to be that impactful, but in the end, its blast radius reaches further into a future than any of us could ever know. The funny thing is, the love I have for my daughter and the love she has for me made it incredibly easy to see. The love my whole family has for each other made it even more apparent.

Remember that.

Wives, love your husbands. No matter what, choose them first. Husbands, love your wives. Prefer them above everything else. Parents, love your children. Embrace them before embracing the things you think might be most beneficial to you personally. Do these things and enjoy a sturdy family, a gift of the Lord well-protected from a culture seeking to divide it. Our floundering 21st-century society needs you to do this, now more than ever.

[To view the prayer, click here.]

Friends are Friends

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I’m sitting here wondering… who are the people in your life you trust, and why do you trust them? I know that’s a deeper question than it sounds. Each of us has people in our lives we’ll trust for one thing but not another. Still, there are those we keep close in everything. They are second selves in a way—people we’ll lean on no matter the circumstance.

I’m guessing that for many of you, it’s your family that best fits within the boundaries of this description. Speaking for myself, I can certainly affirm that my wife, Jennifer, is the one person I trust unreservedly with everything. She’s also the person I can trust to not pester me when there are situations happening that, while I need to keep them confidential, are clearly weighing me down. She never pries, but instead, does what she can to cheer me up, all the while encouraging me to keep pressing forward, especially when she can clearly see that I don’t feel like I can. This, again, is an aspect of her trustworthiness.

I have a trustworthy Bishop, too. He’s more than an ecclesiastical supervisor. He’s a friend. Even better, he’s a pastor’s pastor to all in the district. What I mean is that for any of the church professionals out there within reach of his supervision, if they have no one else to trust aside from Christ, they can trust him. I’m glad for that.

Since I mentioned the idea of confidential things, in contrast to those you’d trust, there are those around each of us who display a tendency for handling secrets in the same way they handle cash. They circulate them, using them to buy and sell with others. By the way, those folks are often the first ones to pester for secret information, ultimately betraying their lack of intention or ability for ever keeping to themselves whatever it is you may share. There’s another term for those people: Gossipers. For the record, I keep gossipers at arm’s length. In fact, anyone who knows me will know I have a tendency to come down hard on gossipers. Gossip is poison to the Church and it should never be tolerated.

Of course, keeping confidence isn’t the only thing that makes a person trustworthy. Again, speaking only for myself, the people I keep closest are the ones I know will receive my words honestly—easy or hard—and in turn, they know I’ll do the same with theirs. I hope Jennifer doesn’t mind that I’m repeatedly using her as an example, but this reminds me of something she articulated so wisely a few years ago. In fact, I mentioned it in The Angels’ Portion, Volume III. I may have shared it with you before. Either way, here’s what I wrote:

“‘Friends are friends until they’re not,’ my brilliant wife has observed. And the substance of her meaning is a direct outflow of her life as a pastor’s wife. She knows all too well that her husband is always just one decision, action, conversation, or sermon away from ticking someone off and seeing that which once was become a thing of the past. She knows all too well that if she shows up on Sunday and gets the cold shoulder from someone who only last week was as fresh and friendly as a springtime sprig, it’s because of something I did.”

Friends are friends until they’re not, which is why I’m guessing that like me, the people you trust the most are the ones who continue to prove the long-lasting nature of real friendship that can withstand being over-taxed by mistakes, careless words, or whatever else might cause division between people. Most often the first action of a trusted friend, at least the kind I’ve described so far, won’t be to attack you, but rather will be to seek peaceful ways to fortify his or her friendship with you through faithfulness to Christ.

I appreciate the phrase, “True friendship is never serene.” Marie de Sévigné said that. She was right. And her point: True friendships are not without turbulence. Still, I’m guessing they have something that other relationships do not: Humility and forgiveness.

Humility will always be a sturdy bridge for carrying heavier issues over from one person to another. And if forgiveness is there waiting on the other side, the friendship will be proven capable of withstanding what breaks all other relationships.

Christians, in particular, know these things very well. And why wouldn’t we? We know that even as we were God’s enemies, completely dead in our trespasses and sins, Christ humbly submitted Himself to death on our behalf (Ephesians 2:1; Romans 5:6). The forgiveness He won for us by His death is the foundation of our very identity as human beings. From this, we know without question that He is the absolute epitome of “friend,” having made clear to us that there is no greater love to be found among friends than that one would be self-sacrificing, that one would lay down his life for the other (John 15:13). When Jesus speaks this way, of course He’s referring to Himself as the only One capable of being the truest friend. And yet, He certainly gives this faithful Word in order to establish the same selfless relationships between His people, knowing that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we would be found emitting to each other in much simpler ways what He first demonstrated to us in the greatest of ways.

You may have other criteria behind your determining of trusted friends. I certainly have others I’ve not shared. Nevertheless, what I can tell you with relative simplicity is that when humility and forgiveness are present in a person, the rest of what we might consider to be not-so-likeable qualities are most often barely noticeable—which makes complete sense. It’s a lot harder to see the bad stuff when Jesus is blocking your view.

You Look Young for Your Age

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I learned something a few days ago. It came to me just after a discussion with my wife regarding her feelings about my beard.

To begin, she’s not a fan of my beard by default, at least not at the length I’ve been keeping it lately. That being said, she doesn’t completely hate it. It’s just that when it gets a little more ZZ Top-ish, she doesn’t appreciate the scragginess when I kiss her, or the fact that she has to be a spotter at dinner, being ready with a glance and gesture to let me know that not all of my spaghetti sauce made it into my mouth.

I do appreciate her help in this regard. By the way, remind me to tell you the story sometime about what happened to me at a gas station in Milford after having eaten a bag of popcorn with the kids in the lunchroom at the school.

Anyway, Jennifer knew me when I didn’t have the beard, and so she knows why I started growing it.

First of all, while my life doesn’t move along at the speed of light, at a minimum, it’s often clocking very near the speed of sound. Speaking practically, growing a beard has made getting ready in the mornings much easier. Not having to shave gives me a few minutes more. Yes, minutes matter to me. Secondly, I’ve always had a young face. And even though I’m a long way from my thirties, even with the beard, people swear I’m barely into them. That’s nice, right? Except for a guy who has a side hustle of reviewing whiskies, without the beard, it used to be that I could barely get the lady behind the counter at the liquor store asking my age to believe the driver’s license I was showing her wasn’t fake.

“That’s you, huh?” she’d ask.

“Yep,” I’d reply, “that’s me.”

“You look young for your age,” she’d continue.

“Yeah, well, I’m married, have four kids, and a mortgage,” I’d offer. “And one of those kids is in college.”

My beard has helped somewhat in this regard.

But without rambling on for too long about this, what lesson did I learn after my discussion with Jennifer? I learned that only one of the two reasons remains for keeping the beard.

Honoring my promise to Jennifer to do some trimming, I went upstairs to begin the task. As I gathered closely to the mirror, I realized I really don’t have a young face anymore. I saw wrinkles I’ve never seen before, and a tiredness that I used to only be able to feel but not necessarily observe. And while I’ve always had a thick head of hair, I noticed far more of it had begun silvering. In fact, most of the beard hair that ended up in the sink was gray. Jen says the gray makes me look distinguished. I don’t know about that. What I do know is that as I zipped this way and that way with the electric trimmers, I could hear the words “You look young for your age” beginning to carry a far different tone. What was once something that sort of bothered me had become in that moment a compliment.

But here’s the twist: A compliment like that is only given by someone who thinks you’re old. In other words, the tables had officially turned. To use youthfulness as a compliment is to admit I’m not youthful.

Maybe I’m digging too deeply here. I guess I do that with these things, sometimes. Nevertheless, Jennifer and I keep each other accountable when it comes to this whole aging thing. She’ll say to me just as I’ll say to her, “Don’t wish the days away.” Usually it’s said in a moment of frustration over the kids, or work, or something challenging. And certainly we say it mindful of the future—that eventually the day will come when there won’t be any more days like these. In that light, we say these words to remember to be immersed in the moment.

It was Seneca who said, “Old age is an incurable disease.” It’s an illness we all possess, and in a sense, doing whatever we can to look or feel as young or old at any given moment is not necessarily the issue, but rather the awareness that an endpoint is always eminently near. Death can and will arrive at the appointed time. I remember hearing the news that my grade school friend Todd had fallen from a tree and died. I remember hearing people say his death was untimely. But in truth, when it comes to Death, age doesn’t really matter. We’re all going to die.

Knowing this, as an extension of the lesson learned while trimming some of my beard away, I thanked the Lord for His grace, acknowledging He has been so very good to me and my family. I thanked Him for being fully immersed in every moment of my life—and the life of my family—especially when we as individuals weren’t as invested. I ended that prayer by holding Him to His promise to continue to be there for us until our very last hour together, knowing my greatest hope is not that we’ll never taste Death, but that Jennifer, Joshua, Madeline, Harrison, and Evelyn will one day be within my reach in the glories of eternal life in heaven.

I suppose one of the best lessons to be learned by all of this is that Christians can look into the mirror, see an aging expression, and yet be confident enough to face the setting sun of this mortal life it is betraying. Easter prompts this courage. It reminds us of a sunlight that never sets, one not being emitted from a sun or moon, but rather from God Himself (Revelation 21:23). It brings to mind the death of Death (2 Timothy 1:10) and the resurrection and restoration of failing bodies (Philippians 3:21). It reminds us that we aren’t inheritors of this life, but of the life to come (Titus 3:7). A glance in the mirror, while it will reveal the mortal illness of age, through the lens of faith, it can also show you the face of someone the Lord looked upon in love, someone the Lord went into the fray of Sin and Death to snatch back from the dreadful permanency of eternal Death awaiting each and every human being at the end of the illness. The next time you look in the mirror, I encourage you to think on this Gospel truth. And maybe even offer a prayer, as I did, thanking the Lord for the days you’ve been given, and for any of the days yet to come.

Dying to Meet You

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Do you have time for a quick story? Since you’re here, I’ll go ahead and share it.

We took a phone call here at Our Savior this past Friday. I didn’t answer it. Nikki, our Parish Administrator, did. It was someone calling to chat with me. Even though I wasn’t necessarily steeped in anything crucial, Nikki took a message for me. She does this because she knows that while technically Friday is my day off—and I probably shouldn’t tell you this—but I’m always in the office on Fridays. I have a few regularly scheduled appointments in the morning, and then after that, I use the rest of the day to catch up on things I didn’t have time for during the week. She runs block for me to let me do my thing.

Anyway, a woman called to let me know she didn’t appreciate the comparison I’d made in a recent radio bit equating Christians who justify skipping worship on a regular basis to so-called believers who justify voting for a candidate who favors abortion.

To be fair, the woman wasn’t rude with her critique—which was a welcomed difference in comparison to so many other calls or email messages I’ve received from metro-Detroit listeners. Instead, Nikki described her as someone who, with a conversational tone, was troubled “by likening someone absent from church to a Christian who’d support abortion,” and her hope was that I’d reconsider broadcasting the particular segment in its current form.

I’ll admit the association is a brutal one. And I’m more than willing to reconsider my words. The problem is, I didn’t write the script on this particular radio bit. My daughter did. Evelyn’s the one who made the observation and ultimately formed the comparative conclusion. I was so inspired by her insight, I wrote down what was spoken between us and together we recorded the 60-second radio spot right then and there. Again, I put into the microphone what I said. Evelyn put into it what she said. The brief conversation fit perfectly between the 15-second intro and the 15-second outro of my one-minute-and-thirty-seconds of airtime.

The context was simple. While waiting in my office before school, Evelyn was scanning the images from one of our previous church pictorial directories. Turning the pages, she stumbled upon the picture of someone she didn’t recognize. Second only to her dad, Evelyn practically lives here at Our Savior. She knows everyone’s name. And if she doesn’t know a member’s name, she certainly knows all the faces. Looking at a pictorial directory of people officially labeled as “members,” one holding the kindly faces of countless people she considers as members of her Christian family, it was natural for her to ask about someone she didn’t recognize. I didn’t say much at first, but I was careful not to be deceptive. Had I dodged her question, she would’ve known. Remember, like me, she’s here every Sunday. If she doesn’t recognize you, it’s probably because you don’t attend. That being the case in this particular instance, when she asked for the identity of the person, I said very nonchalantly, “She’s a member of the congregation, but she just doesn’t come to church very often.”

“Well, I’ve never seen her before in my life,” she replied, sounding somewhat concerned—just as I’d expect from this little girl with such a huge heart for her church family. “Does she work on Sundays?”

“No,” I answered, again trying not to give her any more information than she required.

“So, she could be here on Sundays?”

“I suppose.”

Evelyn thought for a moment, and then she laid the situation out unembellished. “How can she consider herself a member of a church she doesn’t even want to attend?”

My answer: “That’s a really good question, honey.”

Her next uninhibited reply, being the ardent pro-life girl that she is: “That’s kind of like people who call themselves Christian but support abortion. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

First of all, can you tell Evelyn is in tune with what’s going on around her, both in her church and her world? Second, there you have it. Even a child understands the inconsistency. How can we claim to be a devoted follower of someone we want nothing to do with? Using the same logic, how can we claim faith in Christ who is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), and yet be in opposition to the Word of God when it comes to topics like abortion?

It just doesn’t make any sense, and my little girl knew it.

Of course as adults, there will always be plenty of unknown angles to Evelyn’s observation that we’ll discover. COVID-19 has made things a little crazier these days. However, rest assured that the person in the picture was MIA long before COVID-19. That being said, be careful not to square the angles for escape from her scrutiny’s sting with whatever illegitimate excuses at whatever moment work best for you. And be sure to take even greater care not to overcomplicate or find offense in what’s been laid bare. If you do, you’re sure to miss a simple truth revealed by way of a simple faith, the same kind of child-like faith described by the Lord in Matthew 18:3 and now being demonstrated by a little girl who sees time with her Savior, concern for the members of her church family, and doing everything humanly possible to protect the lives of unborn children as essential and non-negotiable to the Christian life.

Her evaluation was simple, but it was a good one. I suppose in essence, it reminds us that even as our God cannot be in contradiction with Himself, He does not grant us space for being in contradiction with Him, either. This is built into the Lord’s announcement, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).

Now, to begin wrapping all of this up, right after Nikki told me about the call on Friday, I posted on Facebook the very first thing that came to mind:

“I’m beginning to think that for some Christians, worship and Bible study are so precious they feel they need to ration them. Go to church.”

Yes, it was a sarcastic play on words.

“Well, I don’t support abortion, so don’t put my skipping church into the same category.”

But they are in the same category. Don’t have other gods. Don’t misuse God’s name. Don’t skip church. Don’t kill. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. These are all a part of the same list of things we do to thumb our noses at God, and ultimately, they’re things that keep us separated from Him. And yet, our Lord reaches to us by His Gospel. He empowers us there by His Holy Spirit for acknowledging our dreadful disobedience. Only by the power of the Gospel can we know to repent of these Sins and be changed to desire faithfulness (Romans 1:16).

I don’t necessarily know what many of the other churches around us are doing, but opportunities for holy worship are plentiful here at Our Savior. We have two Divine Services on Sunday. We enjoy the Office of Matins on Monday, another Divine Service on Wednesday, and an abbreviated Responsive Prayer (liturgics) service on Thursday.

And God is continually blessing all of our time together during these occasions for worship.

Dear Christians, there’s no need to ration your time with Christ. There’s an abundance! Indeed, the Lord is here, and His merciful gifts are overflowing all week long. Surely you can make it to one of those services to receive from the bounty that belongs to those who are His own? Wear your mask if you want to. Or don’t. No one is judging anyone in this regard. And why would we? The goal is simply to gather with the Lord and receive His care just as He desires to give it.

Quite honestly, I say all of this with a rather sizable concern in mind. For me personally, it’s one thing to be unrecognizable to Evelyn. Truthfully, if you are yet to meet her, you are missing out. But it’s a thing of far greater terror—the greatest terror there is—to be unrecognizable to Christ; to be one to hear Him say at one’s last hour, “I never knew you. Away from me…” (Matthew 7:23).

Go to church. You belong there. And even if you don’t feel like you belong just yet, go anyway. Christ is dying to meet you. Well, “died” to be more precise. And I know a church full of people who are eager to make the introduction.