Malachi: Caught You Getting It Right

I’m not much for change. I know that can be a problem at times in a world which changes fast. You can resist all you want—took me a long time to cave and switch from dial-up to high speed wireless. Change happens. Resistance is futile. Get with it or get out of the way sir…ma’am. Things get worn out. Methods and styles turn stale. Technology rolls on. Kids grow up. Ah, the kids. That’s when it hits us that time is passing, when we look at the kids. All those people who told me, “Enjoy her now, ‘cuz she’ll grow up fast,” much as they annoyed me were right. Even though it seemed like she’d be my little girl forever, she’s changing. Now I know. When she was a first grader, her teacher sent her home from school with this poem about how kids are like kites and we spend our lives trying to get them off the ground, then they catch air and they’re up. We run ourselves ragged trying to keep them up. Then, it happens. They start to fly, and we let the string out a little at a time and they get farther and farther away and then one day we cut the string and blah, blah, blah. I glanced at the poem and went back toSportsCenter. Because the string was short and the kite was close. As far as I was concerned, she wasn’t changing fast enough. Then. Nowadays, I read the poem and cry. Nowadays I’m the guy telling someone else, “Enjoy ‘em. They grow up…” you know. They indulge me, but I know what they’re thinking.

I remember when Jessica got her ears pierced. She’s my daughter. She was maybe eight. We walked into a corner shop in the mall. Her mom and I turned her over to a pair of teenagers who walked her to the chair. Jessica sat down. Little girl in a big chair. The technicians (that’s what they call them now) swabbed her ear lobes. They marked the spots. They positioned the piercing guns. We held our breath. The teenagers smiled and told Jessica that she was real brave. Seemed like Jessica turned a little gray. She looked scared. I know this sounds a bit dramatic and clichéd, but time seemed to stand still. Seriously. It was gonna hurt and I was worried for her. But, there was something else going on inside of me. I was worried for me. I looked at her sitting in the chair and the thought crossed my mind, “She’s being altered. She will never be the same. They’re putting holes in her body—a body I helped create.”

She’s my only child. Part of me wants to keep her small and close. I don’t want her to change. She’s my one and only child that I helped make and every change in her seems to make her a little less all mine. She’s my only begotten.

Only begotten. All my life I’ve heard that Jesus is the Son of God. His only begotten Son. That’s a fundamental doctrinal statement; it’s a theological truth. I guess I hadn’t thought of it so much as a relational truth. It just didn’t penetrate all the way into my thinking that there is relationship in Heaven. Oh sure, we got used to the language: God the Father, Jesus the Son, and The Holy Spirit—the…the…well the third person of the Trinity. Person. I’m a person. I know that God is the Father, but it’s not like us. They didn’t go fishing together, Him and Jesus. God didn’t have THE talk with his Son when He reached adolescence. He didn’t go in Jesus’ room and tell Him to turn down that bizarre music (my brother introduced our family to Alice Cooper). My dad used to play basketball with us kids—did it into his fifties. Jesus and God didn’t play ball together. It’s not like that for them. God and Jesus are above all that. Yahweh is unaffected by that which affects us. He’s not touched by that which touches us. Oh? So He sent His Son to earth. Big whoop. He’s God. Letting go for Him, is not like letting go is for us. There are no risks. He knows it will end well. We read that Jesus was tempted, but it was the impossible possibility, right? I mean it’s all a script that the two of them are following. Right? Or is it? The story says—whether our brains can grip it or not—that sometimes God is grieved. The story says that Jesus felt abandoned by His Father. God let go. Jesus called home, crushed hard by stress. God said “Finish it.” Jesus got pierced. God looked away. Jesus finished it and returned home scarred.

Back to the chair in the corner shop in the mall. The technicians pulled the triggers. In less than a beat she was pierced twice and was now an eight year old with shiny new jewelry attached to her head. I started to breathe again. She was still mine, though a little more kite string singed my palm.

When she was thirteen, Jessica got braces on her teeth, and I went through it another time. They were changing her again. Even after they took them off, I missed the way her teeth were before. I liked the gap between her two big teeth. I liked her the way she was.

I wonder if the Father had these thoughts about The Son. I wonder if He did His version of what I did. “Look at Him. He’s leaving. When He comes back He won’t be the same.” And he wasn’t. We don’t talk about it much because there’s all the large and meaningful doctrine to keep us busy. But, Jesus Christ was altered for us. Once He wasn’t human. Then He was. And He is. He changed forever. He went back different than He left.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. I can change.