The Smiling Face of God's Providence: Sermon on Baby Mac PART I
Today I will start a series of blogs, taking excerpts from the sermon I shared with our church family on Sunday. Here's the first:
"A Different Day
Today is going to be a little different, due to a few new events in the life of our family. For those who haven’t heart, the little boy growing in Sharon’s tummy has been diagnosed with myelomeningocele, more commonly known as Spina Bifida, and all of the assorted complications that go with it. He’s the 6th child the Lord’s given to us, the 4th to make it past 24 weeks old, and the 2nd to be born with this neural tube defect. If you would like more information about his prognosis, you can read my blog on the website. I put as many details as we know there for your reference.
The elders and I, after some discussion and in light of my role here in the church, the serious nature of this new turn of events, and how it will likely effect my life moving into the future, thought it would be good if I took a little time this morning to address the issue in more detail, to explain how we’re doing as a family, and more specifically, unpack a little bit about how we’re processing this.
Some Hesitations
First, I’ve hesitated doing so, because Sharon and I are quite aware there are many, many people who are going through much, much worse trials that this. Drawing out the details of one’s life can feel a little self-serving, as though we think we’re the first people on the planent to ever experience heartache and pain. As I’ve said before, life is hard, we all have struggles, and considering the fact that neither Sharon or I have never gone a day in our lives without food (putting us in the 90th percentile of the world’s population) when it comes to the big picture one might be tempted to ask in the immortal words of someone somewhere, “Well watcha crabbin’ about?”
So we want to be very clear...we have so much to be grateful for. The night we found out the news about Baby Mac and the new opportunities the Lord was giving us with him, we sat and began recounting God’s specific goodness and faithfulness to our family. The list grew quite long, and we were quickly overwhelmed with how gracious God has been to us. It’s almost laughable. We have SO MUCH to praise him for. It’s been easy to be grateful in light of His kindness to us. From our vantage point, He has poured out blessing without measure. When I preached three Sunday’s ago about Moving Forward by Looking Back on evidences of grace, and in so doing cultivating a deep and abiding faith in future grace, I was speaking to you out of a deep place of experience.
So this is in no way an exercise to garner self-pity. My goodness no. God has been exceedingly kind to us, and we hope, in the sharing of this story, to draw attention to that.
This Isn’t Tragedy
Secondly, we in no way want to sound as though this is the worst-possible tragedy to strike our home, and now the world should stand still and feel bad for us as we process this horrific news in front of everyone. Again...a thousand no’s. Quite the opposite, it’s precisely because we know that others are hurting and suffering, and in many cases with things much worse than what we’re facing, that we thought it might be helpful if we shared pieces of our story and how faithful the Lord has been to us. If you are hurting, or going through the dark night of the soul or wondering if the Lord can be trusted, we want you to borrow from our faith...He will see you through. If the Lord could use what He’s teaching us to encourage you, then that would make us very happy.
Are We Perfect? Good Heavens No
Third caveat...we in no way want to imply that we have or are currently handling these issues perfectly. By no means. We have and do make many mistakes. You will hear many of those today. Hopefully you can be encouraged by them and learn from them as well.
So, today, there will be no 3 point sermon, no thundering crescendo, no pointed application, just the telling of a story in the hopes that in it you will see the grace of Jesus, and come to love and trust him more yourself as a result.
I have stood in this pulpit many times, and said with deep conviction things about who God is and how he works; today I want to open a window for you to peek into the furnace where many of those convictions were forged..."
Go here to watch, listen, or read the sermon in it's entirety
Comments for this post have been disabled
