A sacrament, by definition, is an act that is both sacred and it carries great significance and most believe that God is acting uniquely within the act. The Catholic Church observes seven sacraments and the Presbyterian Church of America observes two. Baptists shy away from the word and meaning of a sacrament and observe ordinances. Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc believe that these sacred acts are efficacious signs of grace and the visible means to it, while Baptists, Methodists, and others believe that these acts were ordained by Christ and given to the Church to perform. No matter the denomination, the sacraments bind us to the Church and bind us to actions that are based in Scripture, define the church, connect us to Christ, create community, celebrate God's Creation, and give us tangible actions to partake in to express our inner beliefs.
It is in these and through these sacraments that one is able to flesh out and at times makes their thoughts into things they can taste, touch, and see. It is in communion where we touch and see the wine and the bread both shed and broken for us and we partake in that act as a way to say that we too wish to become crucified with Christ. If you have ever experienced a communion service that was personalized, I am sure you can say that it changed everything for you. This happened for me at a Maundy Thursday service many years ago, when I went to take communion and the pastor said, "This is the body that was broken for you, David." I have never taken the cup and the bread again in the same mental state.
The Catholic Church observes marriage to be one of the sacraments and I wish the Presbyterian Church did as well, but it does not. Marriage has taught me things about myself, about the Church, about sin, about forgiveness and grace, and about God that I don't think I would have learned in any other format. It is the perfect picture of the bride and groom imagery used in Scripture to describe both how God feels about Israel and how Jesus feels about the Church.
I say all of this because three years ago, a very wise and learned man was eating lunch with me and he was talking about his children and the joy they bring him and then he looked in my direction and asked what my wife and I were waiting for. I replied with a little, snide comment about not wanting children and how the kids I taught were enough, and how we were waiting. And he shook his head and said that children were an enormous blessing from God and why would anyone want to wait to be blessed by God. I had never thought about it like that before. He then remarked something that I, at the time, blew off as something only he would say, but it is something that is as real to me as the dirt I dug and the seeds I planted today with my students in our school garden. He said that raising children was part of our sanctification. I did not and still not fully understand how much this is true, but I do know that it is.
Sanctification is the process by which one is made holy through first the justification of Christ's death and resurrection and then through acts of merits. This may sound like silly business, but it is something God demands of us (1 Peter 1:16 & Lev. 11:45-46). This is the terrible and yet awe-inspiring refining process where we are purged of our brokenness There is nothing easy about it and yet we aren't expected to do it on our own, but most of us foolishly attempt to do so. I had always thought about the process, but I had never thought that children had anything to do with it except after they had accepted Christ's call on their lives. My wise friend knew otherwise. And 365 days ago, I held my son and for the first time came face to face with every verse in the Bible I had ever read, heard, or memorized about God the Father, God's love, and about me becoming a son.
365 days ago at 10:06 am, my dear boy, you, Ford Hendley Dark, came blasting into the world and several moments later, I held you and it was in that moment that I stared into your little, then blue eyes, and I at once felt something that I had never felt before. It was the Something I had believed in for twenty-three years and it became so real that I could barely breathe and since then each day I am learning it anew. And you, my sweet boy, are teaching it to me and you will never know this until you, yourself, one day hold a child of your own. You are each second that I am with you making the Word become Flesh to me. You are letting me for a minute and broken second feel as if I too am looking down upon the son with whom I am well pleased. And you are making me think about how utterly impossible it would have been to turn my back on my son when he cried out to me on the cross. You, my dear son, are making me a better Christian in an oddly secret way. Having you has been a hidden and unspoken daily sacrament. We have mimicked Adam and Eve and are raising you to tend the Garden and help God make all things new.
Please, if you are taking your precious time to read this, know that I am in no way trying to be sacrilegious or offensive. I am only speaking of feelings that are as real to me as the sun that burned my skin yesterday. And they come rushing to me in the strangest of places and at the strangest of times. I am only trying to, and very weakly I know, and attempting to say that Ford, you have been teaching me what I will forever believe to be the most hidden of sacraments; and that is the having of children. And of course, it would be. God is the God of common things and He is so because it further shames all those that wish and expect Him to be otherwise.
I will attempt to explain myself, but only with meager examples. I say meager because they come and go in the briefest of moments and I know that I will never be through thinking about them. They are the thoughts and times I never imagined because my consciousness is too shallow and my mind too weak. They are memories that have made so many things in life come back to life again. They are the moments that make me begin to see how all secular things are actually so very sacred. They are the moments when the words of C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce take on the meanings they were meant to have:
“Son,'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.”
or
“There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.”
They are the times when you and I walked in the dead of night the countless miles in our little neighborhood when you first arrived and found nighttime to be so hard and I would sing the only songs I know the words to and lyrics like, "Come thou fount of every blessing...Streams of mercy never ceasing..." or, "...Thou my best Thought, by day of by night, waking or sleeping Thy presence my light..." took on meanings that were mysterious and protected in the glow of the street lights.
They are the moments when you smile and your eyes sparkle and I try to imagine Abraham taking little Isaac up the mount praying so badly for another way. They are the times when I finally catch a brief glimpse of what Brennan Manning meant when he said that God just longs for us to crawl up into his lap and rest. They are the moments when the rain is falling and you and I are sharing the swing with your sweet mom and for the tiniest of moments, everything is right in the world and there is nothing else.
They are the times when I can't hardly get home to you and I remember Christ telling us he is coming back for us. They are the times it seems you really do listen to all I am trying to tell you and I think about God listening to me.
They are the smallest of time spans when you are sleeping and still and I get to feel you so close and warm next to me and I catch a glimpse of what it must feel like to climb up into God's righteous right hand.
They are the times when I look at you and feel such overwhelming pride and love and I know realize why the prodigal son's father slaughtered the fatted calf for his boy who had done so much wrong, but was home now. I feel the the tiniest of moments how God feels about me his adopted son. They are the moments when I try to get you to say dad and remember Christ calling out to His Abba.
And so the time is late now and I have just laid you down to sleep for the night and I sit with your pretty mom and I cannot imagine a life without you. I cannot imagine the me who couldn't see kids as the blessing that you are to me and to us. I cannot imagine me telling people that children aren't for me because that is so far from the truth now.
Happy birthday my sweet and precious boy. I hope it was indeed as wonderful as it needed to be. I will never forget even the briefest of moments of how you first arrived to us 365 days ago. I will never forget an ounce of your story and how it is now our story. And you are now our hidden sacrament.
Your Father
Greatest post ever!
ReplyDeleteI wept through this. I deeply love you.
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