I recently served as a babysitter for our newest grandchild. She was a month old at the time and our date was a delight. Her mother left all the needed resources for common eventualities and I employed almost all before she returned. It was a pleasure to feel comfortable and competent after so many years out of practice. I felt honored and loved as my wonderful daughter-in-law confidently entrusted her first child to my care.
As I held that precious, squirmy little one in my arms, cradling her tiny head in my palm, I saw her mother and father, her grandparents, and her own special light. I noticed how my hands have aged since I held her father like that decades before. As I gazed into her eyes I felt compelled to softly speak adjectives to her subconscious while she received her bottle. Each word was a character trait that came to mind as I thought about her mother and the good parents who raised her, and her father and the people we tried to be as we raised him.
From her grandfather the farmer who fed his family and countless others, she receives courage, determination, skill, industriousness, ingenuity, strength, entrepreneurship, love for the land, and perspicacity. From his wife, the grandmother she acquires devotion, thriftiness, good humor, inner strength, vitality, shrewdness, adaptability, resourcefulness, strong will, community-mindedness, and kindness. From their daughter, the baby’s mother, she gets inner and outer beauty, thoughtfulness, intelligence, poise, discipline, resolve, humility, forbearance, humor, humility, and selflessness.
From her grandfather the fisher of men, she is endowed with faith, hope, audacity, duty, loyalty, reverence, insight, foresight, forthrightness, and, perhaps, a way with words. His bride, the little one’s grandmother, brings tenderness, compassion, perseverance, bravery, honesty, reliability, patience, creativity, resilience, and frankness. Their son and father of the child, brings joy, wit, generosity, level-headedness, imagination, sagacity, productivity, laughter, gregariousness, energy, boldness, love, wisdom, leadership, and aptitude.
This long list of adjectives barely touches the vast accumulation of qualities at hand. The rugged and soft hands that hold the infant progeny of so many remarkable people represent the most important institution God created, the family. One day, the baby with the delicate loveliness of an autumn butterfly will be a woman, whose yet unseen gifts and talents will combine with the stuff of her ancestry to make her place in the world made better because she is part of it. As she grows amid servants of Christ, we hope and pray that she will join the family of God as a born-again and eternal child of God.
As I reflect upon my grandchild, I urge you to remember that you too are a legacy. Once upon a time you were held in the hands of your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other special people who shaped the woman or man you’ve become. You were born again, entering eternal life in the family of God. No matter what you’ve done with your life so far, your true potential is still ahead of you. If it is late in your life, you are still a product of the heritage of your forebears and the Spirit’s work in you. When you depart this world to continue your eternal life in Christ, you are still all of that and, unencumbered by flesh and sin, all the more in a future outside of time and space.
Before you were born. Before your parents held your tiny form in their loving embrace, your Heavenly Father held your newborn soul and marveled at your loveliness. The Father saw your worthiness and saved you from damnation by making a way to return home to Him. The love and joy I felt as I held my little granddaughter in my broken and undeserving hands was a small expression of the immeasurable, majestic grace of God. Never forget that you are exponentially more loved, understood, endowed, and redeemed than you can possibly imagine, so carry on and believe.
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