Not for the Mercury…….. no child an error!

I’m a swirl-er.

Things swirl in my head for days, even weeks.

It can be a line of a novel or verses of a psalm or a thought expressed by a friend.

Psalm 139 has been doing the rounds in my head lately……here are a few of David’s thoughts about David, David’s experience:

“For you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s Womb.”
“….. your eyes saw my unformed body.”

A dad showed me a wallet photograph of his son, a beautiful, beautiful child, perhaps 8 or 9 years of age.

The dad was quick to express deep shame, even before telling me the child’s name, that he’d not married the child’s mother. He repeatedly said, his demeanor warped as he talked, he had sinned. His shame appeared to permit the dad very little room to ENJOY his child.

“How long will you punish yourself?” I asked, “when will you free yourself to really enjoy your son?”

Blank stare. Silence. He stared perhaps at the realization I would not join him in layering shame he so liberally embraced. The silence was perhaps needed to process the idea that his son, the “evidence,” could be enjoyed at all.

I experienced something similar with another person – when my sons were much younger – who questioned the validity and the Hand of God in my own family.

This godly man, and by all appearances quite a fine one, could not see my two adopted sons — a term I only use when pertinent to a particular context – as incredible gifts from an amazing kind, generous, extraordinary God. He harrumphed, could not celebrate my sons and me and was stuck with how my sons and I came together.

“Not God’s intent,” he concluded and EXPRESSED to me.

His theology trapped, then choked and strangled his capacity for any semblance of joy at our blessings and apparently he’d have preferred me to join him.

In both cases I saw “theology” or “church culture” or whatever suppress the joy of parenting and the joy of living.

It’s the goodness and kindness of God that leads to repentance — I think I’m just beginning to understand Romans 2:4.

I declare again, as I have many times in print and from the pulpit, every time a child is born we ought all stop whatever we’re doing (imagine it with me!) and fall to the ground, worship, and give thanks and then rise up and join hands and celebrate the miracle that is every birth.

May David’s insights about David as expressed in Psalm 139 become your insight about you and my insight about me.

There ARE NO ILLEGITIMATE children.

There are no unplanned pregnancies.

No child anywhere is an error.

May I remind you, even Jesus’ peers questioned his legitimacy.

See John 8:19.

“Where’s your father?” they taunted.

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