Purpose

Yesterday at about 2:20 PM I held my new granddaughter for the first time.  She is the second grandchild, both girls.  Later in the evening both girls were together for the first time.  Saturday we bypassed going to my wife’s aunt’s 90th birthday and her aunt’s granddaughter’s baby shower to get to the hospital in time.  This morning my wife and I led the 5th week of an 8 week workshop, Parents Teach the Bible.

Thinking through the events of this weekend something is beginning to slowly clarify in my thinking.  Considering our grandchildren our purpose in life seems to come in to crisper focus.  In Exodus 20:5; 34:7; Numbers 14:18; and Deuteronomy 5:9, the Holy Spirit through the writers of those books, warns us of the generational nature of sin.  I have counseled couples who were struggling in their relationship and discovered patterns of abuse that stretched back three and four generations.  The encouraging thing is that the same pattern can be found in righteousness.  2 Timothy 2:2 is Paul’s exhortation for Timothy to reproduce generationally.  Jonathan Edwards is considered to be one of if not the most important theologians in American History.  If you trace his family tree the seeds of righteousness he planted in his family have endured to this day 254 years later, eight generations.

That is why we pursue God.  That is why we dig deeply into His Word.  It is so that we reproduce not just physically – that is easy – but spiritually in our children.  That is the real purpose.  That is the real inheritance we should strive to leave our kids.