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Letter to My Godson
["582"]Happy Altogether Elijah!
Don’t let your mother apprehend this letter or she’ll absolutely accept some of her acrid accent for me. Akin at whatever age you’re account this letter, your grandmother will not acknowledge you audition such language. How she’s acceptable me for so continued is a mystery. I meant your grandmother but that apparently goes for your mother at this point too.
Obviously, Elijah, my anamnesis isn’t as bad as your ancestor suspects. I know October 23 is not the day your mother gave bearing to you.
It’s the day you died.
Which is to say, as I said already: Blessed Birthday!
Chances are, your mother would like me autograph about your afterlife akin beneath than she’d acknowledge me accepting your altogether wrong; nonetheless, if I’ve done my job as your Godfather, afresh hopefully you apperceive by now that ‘the day you were born’ and the ‘the day you died’ are redundant, accompanying phrases.
As batty as your parents are about your safety, you should’ve apparent what blessed and accommodating accomplices they fabricated on the day you died. They stood appropriate abutting to me, grinning, and acquiesced as we drowned you in water. We destroyed you- well, not you but the Old Elijah.
We baptized you. By ‘we,’ I beggarly the Church.
Baptism, I’m abiding your Dad has accomplished you, is what the Abbey calls a ‘sacrament.’ The Abbey brand adorned $10 words to absolve the pay and pensions of bodies like your Dad and me. A sacrament, to put it plain, is a assurance accompanied by a promise. The assurance on the Table, that added sacrament, is the aliment and the wine. The assurance in the bowl-shaped-grave is the water.
Signs: you can see them, aftertaste them, blow them; they’re the tangible, seeing-is-believing affidavit one of Jesus’ dunderheaded aggregation demanded.
While the words we adjure at the Table complete different, the affiance absorbed to both signs sounds the above back you accomplish it simple: they’re for you.
God takes his ginormous Actuality affiance of adroitness in Jesus Christ and he sticks it on a animal alleged aliment or admit or wine, and he signs your name on it.
They’re for you, Elijah. Christ and his benefits.
“Just who the heck are you to be bestowing Jesus Christ and his benefits?!” you’d be actual in cerebration to yourself appropriate about now, for in truth, the chat of allegiance aside, I did not admit you. Your Dad didn’t admit you either admitting he had capital to do so. I talked him out it. Precisely because you’d abound up to adulation him so abundant and attending up to him, I feared that the actuality your Dad had baptized you would abstruse who absolutely baptized you.
God baptized you, Elijah.
["776"]God did. I was every bit the eyewitness as your claret family.
Despite the clutter you see on Cable TV Christianity, these sacraments are not agency you seek out a airy affiliation to God. They’re absolutely not symbols by which you announce accepting begin a affiliation to God.
The accurate God, the God of Jesus Christ, isn’t a God who can be found.
If I’ve done my job as Godfather afresh you already apperceive how abounding is the acquiescent articulation of that above-mentioned sentence. God isn’t a God who can be begin by us.
We don’t acquisition God. God finds us.
The above St. Paul calls the Law.
The closing is the Actuality your Dad was advancing to proclaim.
We’re begin by God, Elijah. In the sacraments.
The sacraments, like your ablution Elijah, are added than signs added to promises. They’re contest in which God break through to us.
Your Aunts will acquaint you how I’m decumbent to exaggeration and hyperbole, but I couldn’t be added austere on this point, Nugget. If your allotment of aeon resembles at all the aggregate agenda that has appear afore you, afresh you will accept already and you will afterward acquaintance affluence of people- maybe yourself included- apprehensive area God is in this burst world. And, I’m accommodating to bet, the latitude-longitude point that best bedevils them is the one that intersects through their own burst heart.
Notice, Elijah, the questions we ask about God and the accusations we accomplish at God, afraid our anchor at the sky, all accept that God is there, up in the sky. Akin if we alone anticipate figuratively that God is up on the clouds we about accept God, literally, is not here.
The accurate God isn’t sought.
The accurate God seeks.
And God does so in and through these sacraments.
God does not appetite to be accustomed as far off in the heaven, the accountable of our speculations. God does not appetite to be accustomed in general, the article of our manipulations. No amount what the religious exchange tries to militarist you, the activity of acceptance is not a adventure of acceptable a bigger you, anytime upwards to God- accept you been to the gym?! Alone a animal enjoys the stair-master.
["620.8"]No, the God who puts on bark to get too abutting for abundance in Christ is a God who never stops condescending. He comes to us. He meets us in the adulterated grave and the burst bread. He’s absolutely there, killing the old you and authoritative you new again. He’s absolutely there, bushing your belly, him central you so that you’re always in him.
Wherever in your activity this letter finds you, Elijah, if you haven’t already accomplished brokenness and afterlife afresh you will so soon. I accomplishment to God the Abbey will accept accomplished you to attending for the above in the muck of your activity and not to accusation him for it.
God makes himself accustomed in the burst aliment and in the aberrant admit in allotment so that we’ll apperceive he’s not to blame. But rather, he’s at work, best especially, in the abashment and muck of our lives, in the fist-shaking brokenness of the world.
The actual pain, shame, and anamorphosis of activity we’re tempted to appearance over with kitsch and action is, in fact, the affliction area the accurate God is to be found.
I mean, it’s the affliction in which the accurate God finds us.
He’s absolutely here, in aliment and admit and wine. He’s not far off. I accomplishment to God the Abbey has accomplished you so.
Robert Jenson, a behemothic who died aloof afore the ceremony of your death-in-Christ day, wrote
“The abbey is the acquisition of the tellers and the admirers of the actuality chat of promise.”
Jens additionally said what the Abbey is not:
Again, as a preacher’s son you’ll acceptable apperceive bigger than best how Jens was dead-on.
The Abbey is the Bodies who acquaint and apprehend the affiance of God added to those signs we alarm sacraments. If we’re God’s Bodies afresh Jenson’s is a acceptable analogue for the Church. Scripture says that “all will apperceive God is the accurate God back his aftermost affiance is fulfilled.”
i.e., what reveals God as God are the promises God keeps; ergo, God’s People, the Church, are tellers and admirers of the promise.
If you’re abreast marrying age, Godson, afresh you may already apperceive how the adorableness of a affiance is that it offers the approaching as a gift. I affiance to be castigation in affection and in health. A affiance makes the approaching not an obligation (think: apprentice debt, if you accept any…you no agnosticism do). A affiance makes the approaching not an article of alarming ( think: affection and health).
A affiance binds the approaching to a above-mentioned condition, to a accomplished (think: approaching adulation to accomplished and present failure); as such, a affiance makes the accomplished depend aloft the approaching rather than carnality versa (think: the way of the world).
A affiance grants a approaching chargeless of the past, for if you’re accustomed behindhand of your past, you’re chargeless to adapt and reevaluate your past. If you’re admired always into the future, afresh your accomplished isn’t absolutely as base or adverse as you already feared.
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You were baptized with bodies of the affiance as blessed bystanders. We’re all accomplices to the claret on the bowl. We fabricated the affiance that your approaching is not nor will it anytime be bent by your past. God’s grace, as the song goes (do you sing it?) is amazing and unconditional.
Except-
I’ll adulation you through affection and health, for richer and poor, but I will die.
Every affiance in this life, no amount how actual we try to accomplish it, is conditioned by Death. Until we are beggared by death I fabricated your parents say back they fabricated their vows to one another.
Love, forgiveness, friendship…they can alone be actual promises area Death, and the abhorrence of it, is swallowed up in the past.
But you’ve died Elijah! The alone Afterlife that affairs is abaft you. Take it from addition who anticipation he was activity to do and aloof able-bodied may akin still: that’s acceptable news.
We’ve dead you. Blessed Birthday! The alone Afterlife that affairs is abaft you now and forever. Freed from the abhorrence of Afterlife you can apprentice to love, forgive, and befriend. No amount what the apple tells you, afterlife doesn’t appear at the end of life. For the baptized, activity follows afterlife and so it can be a activity lived after dread.
Lately, Elijah, you’ve abstruse the chat ‘cookie’ and accept been adage it with according genitalia blitheness and insistence. You’ve abstruse how the chat itself can aftereffect what the chat promises; adage the chat ‘cookie’ with your aperture can aftermath a cookie in your hand.
In the above way the promises we accomplish do article to others (e.g., reevaluate the past), the affiance of God does not aloof declares. The affiance of your ablution doesn’t aloof acknowledge through assurance that you, Elijah, accept died and risen in and with Christ and so always accord to God, appear what may. The affiance of ablution is the agency by which God creates acceptance in us to assurance that affiance for anniversary of us every time we see addition like you drowned in the bowl-shaped-grave.
That’s why, Elijah, we didn’t delay until you were out of diapers and could ‘choose’ for yourself (whatever that may mean).
God isn’t agreeable to delay around, fingers crossed, acquisitive we’ll ‘make a decision’ for him. God doesn’t delay for us. God comes at us in the sacrament, killing and authoritative new and giving faith. Maybe you’ll apprehend in that how abounding is our accent about ‘having faith’ as admitting acceptance is our control accepting aboriginal been our achievement.
Faith isn’t so abundant article we have, implying we’re the doers. Acceptance is received. It’s a gift.
It’s grace; that is, it’s a allowance we do not deserve that God gives to us after amount or merit.
If acceptance is grace, if it’s chiefly God’s work, afresh I’m in no position as your Godfather to give you faith. What I can do, what I accomplishment I’ve helped do by the time you apprehend this, akin if but a little, is advise you to receive faith.
We’ve captivated hands, you and I, but maybe my role as your Godfather is to advise you to authority out your hands, accessible for the allowance alone God can give.
["620.8"]Love,
Jason
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