Monday, August 26, 2019

day no. 14,917: my favorite f-bomb

Yesterday (July 7, 2019) I sat next to my son, Finneas Haddon Foxe Van Voorst, at church. 



The text that was being preached was 

Titus 2:11-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Finneas is named after Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, who is renowned for his zeal. Paige and I prayed that our son would be full of the same sort of chutzpah for our son, a man who would stand when everyone else was lying down (Psalm 106:30). 

As the sermon went along I looked down and saw my son's sermon notes book on the ground in front of him with a large "F" on the front.

It occurred to me that this was very fitting. Finneas is an F-bomb. He is full of zeal and determination. He inserts himself into situations without reservation. He is a future man I am excited to meet. He is my very favorite F-bomb. Few things shake people up like a well-timed, carefully selected F-bomb. It requires discernment. Simply having an "11" does not every situation an "11" make. My primary parenting goal in this season with my son is to thank God for his built in "11" and to teach him to do the same. In addition, I've been teaching Finneas as sense of proportion. When you have an "11," I've observed that you also have a tendency to act like everything is an "11." 




During the service, Finneas wrote, "i heart you" on the top of a page and elbowed me to get attention. I wrote back, "eye heart u 2," to which he responded, " i heart u 3"


























I love being a dad and having the opportunity to grow in my ability to discover and develop my children for the purposes of deploying them into the service our Great God and Savior.

My aim is to fan their respective flames and send them flying into the darkness for God's glory and the good of whatever neighbors God would place in their path. An arrow does damage, but a flaming arrow does damage while illuminating the darkness.

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