Dadhood one year later.

Being a Dad.  The best job in the world.

As I look at the past year of my life, remembering all of the moments of Luke's first year, I can only stand in awe of our God.  The moment he was born, something changed in me that will never be the same.  I can't really define that "that" thing is, but I know my entire being changed.  Just like it did when it was the day of our wedding, only different.  I guess it brought me a whole new understanding of God that I couldn't fully grasp before.

Rolling. Crawling. Walking.... Dadda.

Milestones are crazy.  You sit and watch your kiddo do the funniest things.  Of course, they're the funniest things to us, then shared on Facebook, and of course some people wonder if we'll need counseling for "oversharing" pictures.  But the crazy part is, we knew he'd roll, crawl, walk and eventually will talk in understandable words other than "momma", "dadda", "dog" and "ball".

Is this not a picture of our relationship with our Father??  How many times do we wonder if we'll ever get past this or that struggle, mature in our walk with God, stop this or that?  Each time we do, God already knew we were going to.  Yet the angels still celebrate with him that we took that step in our lives!  What does that celebration look like?  I don't think there's a Facebook in Heaven, but I'll bet that celebrations with God are millions of times better than text/pics/video on a broken website.

Routines. Something I never had.

Before Luke, Rach and I didn't have much of a routine.  I certainly didn't.  Spur of the moment was much, much more common for us.  She is a planner, so things like vacations and weekends still had a structure of sorts, but nothing like now.  I feel like an Olympian when we only take 5 minutes to pack up and get out the door.  

Bedtime has become my favorite.  We both understand that he likes us to both help put him down.  We've given him a bath together for the entire first year, minus an occasional Rangers playoff game of course.  Luke understood those nights that dad had to be at Granddad's watching our Rangers.  But my favorite part of everyday is praying with Luke.  He knows I'll read the same exact story - Goodnight Moon - then we pray.  My prayer is everything from something small to something so serious as his salvation when he's older.  

Be there.  That's what stuck with me.

Pretty much everyday for the last 5 months, I've been able to come home for lunch and hang out and play with Luke.  Hanging with him for an hour before work and another few hours in the evening has been awesome as well.  Helping start a technology company has run in tandem with this time.  But I heard something a long time ago that stuck with me.  "If you can't help and manage your household, nothing else really matters".  Pretty simple, yet profound.

God has blessed us with so much in Luke's first year.  I know everything will continue to change, both in Luke and around him as well.  Culture will continually change.  But if we lead by Biblical examples and help Luke see the love that God has for him in Christ, he'll have a rock for a foundation.  Both of our parents did that for us and I can only hope that in everything we do, he sees our love for him and then the even deeper love that God also has for him.

Until next year...

The Power of Social Media

What kind of "voice" does social media give to a person?

In the past few weeks, it seems like the digital world has gone mad.  Not that there haven't been numerous things in the past few years that caused a firestorm of tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and other things.  But these past few weeks have been especially busy.

We had the crazed gunman.  I'm guilty of a few posts about that.  Everyone had something to say, whether it was compassion for those who lost loved ones or those that wanted to destroy any hope of another minute on this earth for the gunman.  

We had the Chick-Fil-A stance on traditional marriage.  That brought on what seemed like thousands of opinions on it.  It brought DMs to my inbox because of things I said, mainly because of differing of views.  Some were strong, one-sided.  Others were two-dimensional.  And still others were saying "I just want everyone to shut up".

Yesterday, the flair up began again because of the horrific attacks on a temple where folks were gathered together to worship their god.  Things like "White Supremacist", "Racial Profiling" and even "Terrorist" were used.  I think there's one word we can agree on about it, and that is that it was "horrific".

All that said, how are we, who believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, supposed to use social media?  Looking back, I'm as guilty as anyone in providing a sharp sword toward those who I thought were shoving their opinions down my throat.  They probably said the same about me.  Guilty as charged, to borrow from a popular phrase.

Do we speak out about everything we can in order to point to the Gospel?  Do we just use it to keep abreast of current issues but not say much about it?  The things my head struggles with...

What did Jesus do?

If we look at the Bible, Jesus definitely had several moments where he pointed at culturally-accepted norms and pointed to the Gospel as the Way.  He even turned tables over - although that was on a group of believers inside the church.  But make no mistake, he wasn't a fairy that was on earth to make everyone as happy as they could be.  I have to imagine, though, that the world was just as screwed up in that day as it is now.  Read 1 Corinthians where Paul addresses their culture.  It wasn't pretty.  

Now there wasn't social media back then, but there was the most powerful man on earth.  Because he was God in human form.  He could've used any form to tell people the truth.  Instead, he always asked the Holy Spirit to reveal things to the people.  If you look at the Scriptures, he was in constant commune with his Father and the Spirit.  Are we?

What does this mean for us?

I guess my point, that I'm constantly going against because of my own sin, is that outside of things done through the Holy Spirit's power in us, we are always going to hit a wall.  Trying to strategically speak out against issues we feel strongly about is absolutely an honorable thing and one that Christ calls us to do.  But we should speak out, praying the Spirit to help us, and then let Him do the rest.  Constantly fighting a broken world with a broken concept that is being reputed back and forth by broken people is going to be... broken.

Can you imagine that if we, as believers, took a stand, but then took more action through a season of prayer as well?  I'd love to think that we are praying for this nation everyday, especially in its spiritual state of warfare. But I don't know that many of us are, myself included.

So let's absolutely speak out.  But remember to point to the Gospel, and remember to pray that God will do the rest.  He said that he has won the battle in our lives!  How much more can he win the battle of mankind fighting a failing desire to please itself!  We see through a narrow lens of certain things that get under our skin, but he sees a world that ALWAYS fails His perfect design.  Pray that the broken world will be reconciled to him more and more, not that one issue will just go away.  If that issue does indeed go away, this world still isn't peachy.  It's still broken.  Until he returns...