Fatherhood

I'm scared today.

I want to be right. I so desperately want to be right...and here's why.

The battle is already won. Jesus is victorious and has already triumphed over evil and as we await this truth that was and is and will take place shortly, what do we do with the meantime? I must rejoice in that, but there is a real and scary finality to knowing that the war of good vs. evil has already been decided. That fact is not going to change, it's just a matter of whether we match up with the right side.

I'll give a terrible sports analogy. Your playing for a team, that team is DOMINATING the other team and it has become fairly obvious to all involved that the game is pretty much over with no chance of a comeback. However, there is still some time left on the clock, so what do you do with the time allotted? Pull back? Take it easy? Let the other team run up a few scores to make it look like a game? Give the fans what they want? Do you want to look back at the end, although happy that your team ultimately won, but knowing that you didn't necessarily do what you could have to make the victory that much sweeter?

I don't. I want to be right. But here's what's really scary.

I want to be a servant. I want to plant mustard seeds and let them grow and bare even more. I want to give my life, possessions, livelihood, talents, and very essence back to where it came from. I want to be like Christ.

But there's something else I want. I want to be a Dad. It scares me that Jesus didn't have a son or a wife. It scares me that the very example of the perfect human being, the desired frame of character coveted by all of his followers is in some ways the very opposite of what I want.

I struggle with the fact that while the very greatest thing God has ever done was be a father to a son and in that, the father of grace itself, the father of salvation. I struggle with the fact that the lineage ends there. That the very thing I am looking forward to the most in this life isn't a part of the example I believe I am called to follow.

At this moment, in accordance to who my father is and what type of man he has become and also the man that I am becoming, I have great faith that my son would be my very greatest contribution to the kingdom of God and the furtherance of the Gospel. However, that Gospel, which I believe is truth and the answer to all anxiety, question, and indifference, doesn't necessarily ask me to become that which I desire so greatly. It asks me to suffer, to rejoice in my sufferings and to humble myself and sit in thankfulness.

I want to be right. I want a better understanding of who God is and pray for that daily, as did Paul. A guy who got the stuffing beat out of him multiple times, survived and told the story while becoming a father to many modern churches and leaders within the furtherance of the Gospel.

So, in understanding that I serve an impractical God, is it bizarre for me to think that God is perhaps calling me away from what would be deemed normalcy by the world and myself? To follow a certain path that looks a lot like high-school, college, job, marriage, kids, mortgage, retirement, grand-children, casket? It's not a bad path. But is it right? Is it aligned with the Gospel that I know is truth and have seen in action?