A prayer for my children

If my boys live to old age, they will see the dawn of 2100. What will they need?

Above all, they’ll need the same that I need - Jesus.

But how can I transmit to them all the anguish, the rage, the weeping and groaning that has driven me towards the cloud of fire and smoke? Or the joy, the beauty, the longing and the passion that has beckoned me into the courts of Yahweh? I don’t know.

I cannot save them from this age of violence. It is my sworn duty to guard them in their formative years from crippling trauma. It is my fatherly pleasure to draw out like water the personhood and voice that Yahweh has bestowed in them. But if they walk in the true path they shall be battered and beaten by this wretched age. I’m not talking about martyrdom; the simple resistance of the American saint against the social pressure of tribe, the burden of fear, and the chains of efficiency can crush their spirits while their skin and bones remain unbroken.

My prayer for them is that the beauty of Yahweh and the horrors of civilization will alike propel them to Jesus. May they not shipwreck their faith upon the rocks of lonely despair nor abandon Lady Wisdom for raucous, glittering Folly.

How, Heavenly Father, may I be a lighthouse and a herald to my boys?

(inspired in part by Ben’s post, A Quiet Morning in America).