Children of the Heavenly Father

Jottings from a few weeks ago. The local weather has calmed down a bit since then, thankfully.

The last few weeks, I’ve lost a lot of sleep. I know what you’re thinking: Duh, you’ve got an infant.

But it’s more than that. The world is falling apart at every turn. There’s an earthquake or a cyclone or a tornado every other minute. We recently spent part of an evening in the basement while the tornado sirens sounded. Flooding has turned 83 of this state’s 99 counties into disaster areas. More personally, sad and strange and scary things have been happening lately in the lives of people we know and love. And in the midst of all this uncertainty and tragedy, I happened across an article reminding me that SIDS risk is highest for baby boys, specifically baby boys around two to three months old.

Mourning with loved ones, listening for tornados, and watching a baby boy’s every nocturnal breath: Not conducive to peaceful nights.

In the wee hours of one such night, I finally realized that it was time to let God be God. As I heard in a recent sermon, there’s a difference between believing that God is sovereign and living like it. (Why do I forget this so often? I trip on that first commandment at every turn.) Since then, the world hasn’t gotten any better, but I haven’t been losing quite as much sleep (within BabyBoy’s parameters).

Here’s the deal: “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess” (Luther). Do I believe the promises that were spoken at the font? In faith, we surrendered each of our children to that dangerous deluge of Holy water, to die that they might live. There we placed our children into God’s hands: better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men, even the hands of a mother.

Maternal worries: my faithless attempts to snatch my children back from the only One who can guard their lives forever, no matter what happens in this present vale of tears. Mother-love can be as foolish as it is fierce. No matter how tightly I try to clutch my children, grasping with the desperation known only to mothers, they may yet slip through my fingers at any moment and be lost. But in God’s hands, they are safe forever.

Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.

These verses from one of my grandma’s favorite hymns have been on my lips this past week:

Neither life nor death shall ever
From the Lord his children sever
He to them his mercy showeth,
And their sorrows all he knoweth.

Though he giveth or he taketh
God his children never forsaketh
His the loving purpose solely
To preserve them, pure and holy.

In life and in death, preserve us always, dear Savior.