I want to know you.

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It’s been a great pleasure this week to catch up with my 3 British grandchildren and see the progress they’ve made since I last saw them 7 months ago. Three year old Nicholas is closing in on 4, and the twins, Thomas and Evelyn, have grown to 2½. Vocabulary has increased dramatically for all of them, and Evelyn in particular can chat up an adult till the adult runs out of words.

Raising children is a steady source of God-reminders to parents and grandparents as we get to know each youngster in detail. They’ve all been God-wired with their own opinions and have entered the world with specific likes and dislikes. Looking at a freshly-born 8 pound lump of helpless humanity, that’s difficult to believe.

But wise parents will make a steady project of studying their children, learning their natural leanings and then offering them repeated opportunities to try them out. But do we ever stop learning new things about our offspring, even into their adulthood?

Last weekend I discovered something new about my 29 year-old fifth-born, Hans: he can preach. He did an excellent job delivering a sermon  from an assigned text and made 3 points, each one easy to remember: (1) Believe Jesus, not you; (2) Believe Jesus, not the world; (3) Believe Jesus, not Satan. He pulled new insights from the scriptural story of “The Rich Young Ruler,” coaxing listeners toward the heart of Jesus and sharing from his own heart, too.

Hans isn’t a preacher. He’s never had aspirations to be a reverend but was asked to give this Sunday morning sermon and agreed. I know he was blessed during his extensive preparation, and as his mother (and one of his hearers), I was moved.

When I was growing up, Mom used to quote a short Bible verse from the book of 3 John: “I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth.” (1:4) Since she believed Jesus was truth, she wanted to steadily let us know her greatest desire was that we’d all choose to follow him through life. Listening to my grown son explain how to do this and why it’s the only good life-choice caused my heart to pound with joy.

We parents love to see our children “turn out” well. We’re especially proud when they make sensible choices, perform admirably, win awards, or earn degrees. But when they elevate Jesus Christ to first place in their lives, nothing could get better than that.

“I, [wisdom], love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me. My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver.  I walk in the way of righteousness.” (Proverbs 8:17-20)

Carrot Tops

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My son Hans and his Katy are energetic gardeners. Wanting to teach Nicholas, Evelyn and Thomas the principles of sowing and reaping, they devoted part of their pretty yard to growing vegetables and berries. This week we’ve all benefited from Katy’s delicious cooking, enjoying leeks, onions, strawberries, currants, and other foods from the yard.

Then today Katy planned to harvest the first of an abundant carrot crop, their green tops standing tall and lush. With trowel at-the-ready, she showed the children the plump, orange carrot tops peeking out of the black soil. But when she pulled out the first few, we got a terrible surprise. Each one was nearly as wide as it was long, some virtually spheres, and most were split down the middle with grey gunk in the cracks.

And then we saw the reason: SLUGS.

Thousands of them had been banqueting on Nyman carrots for weeks. As we sliced into the carrot-crevices, slimy blobs wriggled and writhed, objecting to being disturbed. Many of the carrots included hollows in which hundreds of eggs had been laid. The word “gross” wasn’t disgusting enough.

Katy ran for the gardening book while Hans made the decision to uproot all 7 rows of healthy-looking carrot plants. As he dug and tugged, he tossed the uprooted carrots into two piles: contaminated and partially-contaminated.

The children carefully carried the partially-contaminated to a table, where I used a sharp knife to trim away whatever “clean” bits could be used. Then they rubbed off the soil and plopped them into a tub of clean water to go to the kitchen.

What could have been a bountiful carrot crop turned out to be a big bust for a family who had weeded, watered, and anticipated a harvest from April through August. But God saved the day with a spiritual lesson.

As Hans pulled out one foul carrot after another, lamenting the loss, he suddenly said, “This is probably a parallel to what our ‘righteous’ works look like to God. At the end of days, as the Lord combs through our good deeds, he’ll be tossing them into two piles: ‘Contaminated and partially-contaminated.’ Not one will be flawlessly righteous.”

We can easily fool ourselves into thinking our good deeds are boosting our credit with him. But as learned theologians remind us, we’re all sinners, and we’ll always be sinners, to the very end. It’s healthy to remind ourselves of that so we won’t be tempted to classify our behavior as “pretty good.”

The happy truth is we’re saved by God’s grace through faith in him, not by anything we do to earn it. (Ephesians 2:8-9) As Bishop Ryle says, even in our best works, there’s something to be pardoned.

Tonight we ate the carrot pieces shaved from contaminated carrots, but Katy’s plans for carrot soup, carrot cake, carrot bread, and other goodies preserved in her freezer will not materialize.

But in 2013, WATCH OUT slugs!

“We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags,” (…or contaminated carrots). (Isaiah 64:6)

Team Gran, England

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Last week the other grandmother of my/our three British grands and I conducted our 4th annual “Team Gran” day together. We marveled at the progress of our shared little ones since we were last together with them, and delighted in their company for a day while enjoying a rich friendship with each other. The 4000 miles between our two homes always seem to melt away at these rare but meaningful get-togethers, and as co-grandmas we have no trouble picking up where we left off many months before.

So on Friday, Sarah (“Dandy”) and I (“Mee Mee”) left Mummy-Katy behind and piled into Sarah’s car for a day of frolicking with Nicholas, Evelyn, and Thomas. Our adventure was slightly complicated by a need to stay on task with toilet training the 2 year olds, but we managed 10 hours with only 2 accidents, not bad for a couple of women whose toilet training skills had rusted-out decades before.

The first stop on our adventure was the home of Sarah’s friend Alison, who lives in a charming 200 year old stone cottage surrounded by rolling hills, grazing sheep, a river, and a waterfall. We hiked through a lush pasture, stepping around sheep poo-poo, telling the children not to obsess about the piles, since they weren’t as bad as people-poo-poo.

But then, of course, we had to promptly deal with people-poo-poo, pursuing potty training every 15 minutes. Thomas and Evelyn knew no shame at our open-air stops and gladly would have told passers-by about their latest productions, had anyone asked.

Later at Dandy’s house, between moments of focus on bodily functions, she and I played with the children non-stop: storytelling and reading, cars and trucks, hide and seek, soldiers and dollies. We threw ourselves into it all, singing endless songs, serving and cleaning up meals, working through bath time, and then, much to our pleasure, ending up in Sarah’s back yard “Peace and Quiet Garden.”

At the end of the day, we concluded that playing is hard work!

But the Lord energized us to our undertaking, and isn’t that the way it always is? God presents something to us that he’d like us to do, and we often respond with objections, because we feel unprepared, unequipped, or unenthusiastic. But if we’re willing to cooperate with whatever he’s asked, we find that before we begin, he has somehow gotten us prepared, equipped, and excited.

So we plow ahead and do the best we can, and in God’s hands, that’s always good enough. As a matter of fact, even our meager efforts result in something extraordinary when placed in his able care.

Though our “Team Gran” day was jam-packed with action, we did end up in a place of “Peace and Quiet” …albeit with our potties. And a Team Gran day with “Dandy” turned out to be fine and dandy indeed.

“God… will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.” (2 Corinthians 9:10)