Today’s reading: Ezekiel 21; Galatians 3
There are some truths, and some passages, which I understand so much better now that I am a parent, and the end of Galatians 3 is one of them.
We have a lot of troubles with our oldest son’s behavior. He can be incredibly sweet, kind, helpful, and loving, but he can also turn on a dime and be hateful, violent, disrespectful, and disparaging. Some days are better than others, but there are occasionally days that are just downright terrible, and my wife and I reach the end of the day just feeling drained from having dealt with the issues all day. But even on those worst of days, he is still our son. We are invested in helping him learn and grow, developing the skills and maturity to handle his big emotions in healthier ways, etc., but even if he never learns, he is still our son, and we will continue to love and invest in him. No amount of trouble, violence, rule breaking, or anything else could possibly make him no longer our son. Certainly, when he is older, he could choose to cut himself off from the family, but he is our son, and no success of his makes that any more true, and no failure makes it any less true.
The transition Paul describes from the law being our guardian (disciplinarian) to our being sons of God in Christ is the reality I was referring to at the beginning that I feel like I understand so much better now as a parent.
Despite knowing that my salvation was secure in Christ by faith alone, entirely apart from my works, I still very much felt like my performance on any given day must be effecting how God sees me. On a day I messed up or fell into sin, I would be afraid to approach Him, and on days I did well I would waltz arrogantly into his presence like He was lucky to have me there. Being a father now though, seeing that relationship more from God’s perspective, it’s really an entirely different story. I feel like my experience of my relationship with the Lord is much more steady now than it used to be as a result.
The interesting thing though is that I don’t honestly know that that’s really something you can communicate. It wasn’t a lack of knowledge or theological understanding that impacted me earlier in my faith, it was a mixture of a lack of certain life experiences and lack of time/experience with the Lord. I honestly expect that in another 15 or 20 years I will probably look back and marvel at how immature my view of my relationship with the Lord is today, and I’m pretty excited for that day.
I feel like I’m finally starting to understand grace.
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