He entered the world yesterday morning, five weeks early.
I got to be there.
It set me thinking about the preciousness of small things. The tiny toes and the little lips that kept puckering into the cutest kiss that dissolved so quickly I could never quite catch it with the camera. The fine fuzz crowning his head and the eyes still too shy to open.
He’s a tiny bundle with a name that gives him plenty of room to grow. His third name reflects my grandpa’s cousin who gave his life loving God. His first means “son of the right hand.” I pray he will always remember it.
The surgeon who stood at the table reminded me of a moment long forgotten by me. She had been a medical student, I a resident. It was a small thing, something quite ordinary. But ten years later she remembers it vividly.
Maybe it’s because God is in the moments, not just the days, the details of the ordinary as much as the great interventions. It’s here – in the small things – that grace is given and faithfulness lived.
Benjamin, Ben-yamin, in the details of your days, may you learn that you are a son of God’s right hand. Through the moments of your life-long growing, may your stretching soul cling to Him, and so learn to love the hand that holds you.1 As the fragments and fractures of life in this world open up glimpses of glory, may you turn toward the strong right hand that will always be present to help you, and so discover how he delights in you.2 And in these ordinary moments (if any moments can be so named when all are filled with God’s presence), you will discover the path of life and the fullness of joy, for it is this right hand that holds eternal pleasures.3 Be blessed, son of the right hand.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Ps 16:11)
(I will be away this week, taking photos with the first, searching for blue beach glass with the second, playing phase ten with the third, while my sister and her husband focus on their fourth. We will be watching for God’s presence in the moments of each day, each noting favorite glimpses of grace. Care to join us? I’ll be back next Monday (July 16th) with a post that my eldest nephew is already eagerly helping me prepare. Stay tuned.
And may you know yourself securely held by the right hand of the One who loves you and created you to be His own.)
1Psalm 63:8; 2Isaiah 41:10; 3Psalm 44:3; 4Psalm 16:11
