Five Guitars, a poem

Once there were five guitars
Hanging on the wall.
Ready to pick up and play
When the Spirit came to call.
But three of them are packed up
And they're set out on the stage—
This house once had five guitars
But three have come of age
(How quickly they all grew).
This house once had five guitars
But now there's only two.

The Scruffy Little Puppy, a Parable for Children

Once upon a time there was a scruffy little puppy who lived in a pet store on the corner of a busy street in the city. Scruffy little puppy was not like any of the other puppies.

Sparky was fully of vim and vinegar and all the children who visited the pet store loved to play with him. But Scruffy Little Puppy had one lame paw and couldn’t run very well.

Sophie had a beautiful curly coat and wore a bow behind her ears. All the grown ups who came to the pet store said how lovely she was. But Scruffy Little Puppy’s coat was all ragged and tatty.

No one ever took any notice of Scruffy Little Puppy. No one loved him. And no one wanted him.

One day a man came to the pet store and told the Keeper that he wanted a playful puppy for his little boy, and he was prepared to pay fifteen dollars for one. The keeper pointed out Sparky, bouncing around with his ball in the shop window.

“That Puppy,” said the keeper, “is worth fifteen dollars for sure.”

Another day, a young lady came in. When she saw Sophie’s curly coat, she said she just had to have her, and the keeper should name his price. The keeper said that Sophie was worth ten dollars at least.

But no body ever came in asking how much Scruffy Little Puppy was worth. No one told the Keeper that they just had to have him. No one loved him. And no one wanted him.

One day a nice-looking young man came into the pet store. Scruffy Little Puppy didn’t look up from his basket, but he listened closely.

“I saw that puppy with the lame paw in the window,” the man was saying to the keeper. “I think I might like to have a dog like that.”

The Keeper laughed. “You mean Scruffy Little Puppy?” he said. “Oh well. He can’t run very well. And his coat is pretty mangy. Let me show you some different puppies.”

“No,” insisted the gentle young man. “I want that puppy. How much is he worth?”

The Keeper scratched his head. Sophie had sold for ten dollars. Sparky for fifteen. But Scruffy Little Puppy wasn’t worth anything near as much as them.

“Well,” he said at last, “I could give you Scruffy for two dollars. That’s probably a fair price.”

The kind-looking young man rubbed his chin. Scruffy hung his head in shame.

“Two dollars is a lot of money,” he said. “But it’s not enough for my Scruffy Little Puppy. I’ll give you a hundred dollars for him!”

Scruffy couldn’t believe what he just heard. Nor could the Keeper. He said, “Sold!” and put the money in the cash register before the young man could change his mind. And that was the day Scruffy Little Puppy went home with his new master.

Sold for a hundred dollars!

Well. Months and months went by. But the Keeper of the Pet Store never forgot the strange young man who had bought the worst puppy in the store for a hundred whole dollars.

And one day, looking out the window of his shop, he saw that same young man walking past. He was holding a dog leash, and on the leash walking next to him was the finest-looking looking dog the Keeper had ever seen.

The dog had a glossy grey coat. He walked with his head held high, and each step he took was so strong, and graceful, that you never would have noticed that he had just the faintest little bit of a limp.

The Keeper rushed out of the store to greet the man. “My,” he said. “That is a fine-looking dog you have there. What ever happened to the scruffy-little mutt you bought from me?”

The young man looked at the keeper for just a moment, and then he laughed. “Sir!” he said, “This is my Scruffy Little Puppy. It’s the same dog!”

The Keeper was astonished. “But how?” He asked. He just couldn’t believe that this fine-looking dog was the same sad-looking puppy he had sold so long ago.

“Don’t you see?” said the wise young man. “We are as lovely as we’re told we are. If you only pay two dollars for a dog, you’ll get a dog worth two dollars. But a puppy that believes he’s worth a hundred dollars, will become a hundred-dollar dog.

I showed Scruffy he was worth a hundred dollars to me, and that’s what he’s become.”

The Keeper walked away scratching his head. He just didn’t understand.

But God wants us to understand.  Because in a way, what the nice young man did for Scruffy Little Puppy, by showing him just how much he was worth to him when he felt worthless an unloved, that’s like what God did for us.

We were like the Scruffy Little Puppy, and Jesus is like the kind-young man. Because like the man in the story, who paid a hundred dollars for a puppy that no one else would even pay two for, Jesus gave his very life for us on the cross, when we were broken by sin and marred by selfishness. Jesus paid his very life for us, so that we could be with him, and so that we would know how precious we are to God.

And that’s what God wants all of us to know. He loves us so much that he gave Jesus, his one and only Son, who died on the cross for you, so that you would no it for sure, that you are infinitely precious to him.

For My Daughter on Her Birthday (a poem)

I told you once I’d carry you
Around a mountain lake.
And as you know, I did it too
Long after my arms began to ache.

You clung to me and I to you
Where ever the trail led
Despite the fact that we both knew
That you could have walked instead.

Well that was many years ago.
I'm getting grey and you are grown
And though the lakes still come and go
I’ve had to set you down.

But come what may, may you know it’s true:
If the trail gets steep or there’s no way through,
When the lake is wide, or especially blue,
I'll still always do my best to carry you.

Learning to Fly (a song)

When you reach the top
You’re only just starting to climb
So keep rising up
The jump is gonna be sublime

You’ll be soaring across the sky
You’re not falling you’re learning to fly
Just hold your head up and just hold your wings out and
Don’t let this moment pas by
You’ll be soaring across the sky

And you’re not alone
You’re walking where angels dare
So just don’t look down
You’ll be flying on a wing and a prayer

You’ll be soaring across the sky
You’re not falling you’re learning to fly
Just hold your head up and just hold your wings out and
Don’t let this moment pas by
You’ll be soaring across the sky

Just keep the ground below you
Just keep the sky above and
Just keep the wind against your face
The wings of the dawn will show you
How deep, how high his love and
You will be lifted on his grace

You’ll be soaring across the sky
You’re not falling you’re learning to fly
Just hold your head up and just hold your wings out and
Don’t let this moment pas by
You’ll be soaring across the sky

More Than She Knows, a song

She’s got sunlight in her hair
But she doesn’t know it’s there
Shining everywhere she goes
She’s got laughter in her hands
That she doesn’t understand
She knows more than she knows

How quickly once upon a time
Becomes forever after
Like petals falling from a rose
And when the journey’s dark
I want your daylight to surround her
so much more than she knows
I love her more than she knows
I love her more than she knows

There is a star shines in her smile
You might glimpse once in a while
If it don’t fade before it shows
And there’s a wisdom in her words
Even when they sound absurd
She knows more than she knows

How quickly once upon a time
Becomes forever after
Like petals falling from a rose
And when the journey’s dark
I want your daylight to surround her
so much more than she knows
I love her more than she knows
I love her more than she knows

Be thou her beauty o Lord of my heart
Be graceful and radiant in every part
While the World tries to teach her to trade it for lies
May naught be so fair as your light in her eyes

How quickly once upon a time
Becomes forever after
Like petals falling from a rose
And when the journey’s dark
I want your daylight to surround her
so much more than she knows
I love her more than she knows
I love her more than she knows

Learning to Fly, a song

When you reach the top
You’re only just starting to climb
So keep rising up
The jump is gonna be sublime

You’ll be soaring across the sky
You’re not falling you’re learning to fly
Just hold your head up and
just hold your wings out and
don’t let this moment pas by
You’ll be soaring across the sky

And you’re not alone
You’re walking where angels dare
So just don’t look down
You’ll be  flying  on a wing and a prayer

You’ll be soaring across the sky
You’re not falling you’re learning to fly
Just hold your head up and
just hold your wings out and
don’t let this moment pas by
You’ll be soaring across the sky

Just keep the ground below you
Just keep the sky above and
Just keep the wind against your face
The wings of the dawn will show you
How deep, how high his love and
You  will be lifted on his grace

You’ll be soaring across the sky
You’re not falling you’re learning to fly
Just hold your head up and
just hold your wings out and
don’t let this moment pas by
You’ll be soaring across the sky

Bonjour, Ma Petite

Bonjour ma petite, je te chante la bienvenue
Nous t’avons attend tant
Et peut-etre que ce monde, il t’est inconnu
Mais ce bras t’aimeront toujours tant
Alors, ferme tes yeux et reve dans ton coeur
Et plus tard tu le decouvririas
Alors reste ici, tout pres de mon coeur
 Et ces bras t’aimeront toujours tant

Hello, little one I sing your welcome
We have waited a long time for you
And maybe this world is a stranger to you
But these arms, they will always love you
So close your eyes and dream in your heart
Tomorrow you will seek you will find
But rest right here, right next to my heart
And these arms, they will always love you

More Than She Knows, a Song

(a song for Rachael)

Verse 1:
She’s got sunlight in her hair
But she doesn’t know it’s there
Shining everywhere she goes
She’s got laughter in her hands
That she doesn’t understand
She knows more than she knows

Chorus:
How quickly once upn a time becomes forever after
Like petals falling from a rose
And when the journey’s dark
I want your daylight to surround her
So much more than she knows
I love her more than she knows
I love her more than she knows

Verse 2:
There is a star shines in her smile
You might glimpse once in a while
If it don’t fade before it shows
And there’s a wisdom in her words
Even when they sound absurd
She knows more than she knows

Chorus:
How quickly once upn a time becomes forever after
Like petals falling from a rose
And when the journey’s dark
I want your daylight to surround her
So much more than she knows
I love her more than she knows
I love her more than she knows

Bridge:
Be thou her beauty o Lord of my heart
Be graceful and radiant in every part
While the World tries to teach her to trade it for lies
May naught be so fair as your light in her eyes

Chorus:
How quickly once upn a time becomes forever after
Like petals falling from a rose
And when the journey’s dark
I want your daylight to surround her
So much more than she knows
I love her more than she knows
I love her more than she knows

Dancing with the Wind, a song

Not that I think I'm necessarily the best judge, but I feel this is one of the best songs I ever wrote. I wrote it about 7 or 8 years ago for my daughters, two of the loveliest "children of the prairies" I know. We don't live on the prairies anymore, but just being with them still reminds me sometimes of bright blue skies all dappled with white and swaying yellow canola fields laughing in the sunshine. But I wax poetic...

When I first wrote sang it for my wife she asked me about the chorus: what does "loving is knowing and knowing is leaving" mean? And I said, "I'm not really sure" (any song-writers out there will understand) "but I think it means that, to really love someone, you have to be willing to know them for who they really are, not who you think they are or want them to be. And to do that, you have to be willing to leave behind the false impressions or assumptions you've made about who they are so you can discover their true selves... loving is knowing and knowing is leaving (and leaving is coming back again)."

I'm posting it here today because I'm missing them immensely (they're out on the prairies even as I write, probably dancing with the wind right now, while I'm home alone in Oshawa, waiting for the family to get back from vacation). May it remind you, too, of people you love, and miss, and are waiting to be reunited with.

PS. If you listen to the last chorus, you'll hear my girls singing back-up (they're a lot older now).

PPS. if you listen to the very end you'll hear some audio of all three kids jumping on the trampoline when they were 3, 5, & 7 (or so) which I recorded surreptitiously one afternoon. Good times, good memories.

Dancing with the Wind

[listen]


Being a child of the prairies, she seemed to me
A stalk of swaying wheat
Earth born and golden
Burned brown before the coming frost
Like all the summers I had lost,
And dancing with the wind

Gilded with auburn,
with winter’s white expectancy
When keeping is impossible,
But time is rich and lingering
Eyes wide, blue and wondering,
and dancing with the wind

      ‘Cause loving is knowing and knowing is leaving
      And leaving is coming back again
      Until then I’ll take your hand,
      I’ll hold you till you understand
      Until then keep dancing with the wind

Being a child of the prairies, you are to me
A stalk of summer wheat
Earth-green and growing
Face turned towards the summer sun
A taste of seasons yet to come,
are dancing in the wind

      ‘Cause loving is knowing and knowing is leaving
      And leaving is coming back again
      Until then I’ll take your hand,
      I’ll hold you till you understand
      Until then keep dancing with the wind

A Father's Prayer (a poem)

Be Thou her beauty
     (O Lord of my heart)
be graceful and radiant
      in every part.
While the world tries to teach her
      to trade it for lies
may naught be so fair
      as your light in her eyes.

When Solomon's Temple meets Minecraft

 My kids are pretty huge Minecraft fans.  For those of you who have never played Minecraft, think of it as a big game of  "virtual Lego."  Those of you who have played Minecraft will know that it's as much like virtual Lego as Mario Karts is like "virtual Hot Wheels" (that is to say, only a bit). 

Here's Wikipedia's description:  "Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Game play in its commercial release has two principal modes: survival, which requires players to acquire resources and maintain their health and hunger; and creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no health or hunger."

Like I say, Minecraft is a popular pass time at our house. So watching the kids work on a project the other day I floated this idea past them:  "Hey guys, you wanna build a scale model of Solomon's Temple, from the Bible?"

They were up for the challenge, and construction continued off and on over the next couple of weeks.  We used the plans for the Temple and its furnishings as they're detailed in 1 Kings chapters 5, 6 and 7, and tried to follow them as strictly as possible (in Minecraft, each cube is supposed to be 1 metre by 1 metre, but for simplicity's sake we made each minecraft cube equal to one cubic cubit  (a cubit is approximately 0.5 metres, so our scale here is 2:1.)). 

My son, who is a wizard when it comes to all things techie helped us produce this virtual tour of our completed Minecraft Temple, which I offer here for your amusement and illumination:

I've read 1 Kings 5-7 a bunch of times over the years, but nothing brought it to life for me like this project with the kids, trying to figure out how and why they built this magnificent building the way they did. But what was especially fun about the job was the many opportunities it provided for us to talk about the things of God. Here's only a small sample of the questions we chewed over as we "built" our Temple, brick by Minecraft brick.

What's an altar? Why did they need one? What was in the Holy of Holies? Why couldn't you go in there?  What's a cherub?  What's an incense altar?  What did they keep in the Temple storerooms? What's a "bronze sea?"  What was it for?  What were the tables for the show-bread all about?  Why did they keep bread out like that? 

Fielding these questions (and much deeper ones-- Why was it only the priest who could go into the Holy of Holies?  What was sacrifice all about, anyway? And what happened to the Temple?) it occurred to me that meeting your kids where they play is perhaps the best way to mentor them in the things of God. 

Louis Mercier once said, "What we learn with pleasure we never forget"; and if that was ever true, it should be true of our formation in the Faith.

Musical Mondays (III)

This is a song I wrote last year about my daughter; it was inspired by the Hey! Rosetta song "Welcome."  Kind of self explanatory, I hope, though the imagery comes (in part) from Psalm 127:3-5.   The "All I worhip" bridge, incidentally, is a song my daughter wrote when she was three, I came home from work and she was all excited to sing the song she'd written; thought it was fitting. 





Sunday's Child

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

Sunday's child, bonny and blithe
The days are wild, but you're full of life
With mommy's eyes, you're daddy's risk-taker
Chasing down a dare
With spark and spunk you're daddy's peace-maker
Shining everywhere

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

Sunday's child, fair of face
Far to go, and full of grace
With mommy's heart, you're daddy's dream-catcher
And you'll grow strong with wisdom and  stature
Precious in his sight

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

"All I worship  is God on high / All I worship is God on high"


Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He'll be there you know
Like an arrow
He will speed you home

Dancing with the (Saskatchewan) Wind

I'll be orbiting the outer reaches of the blog-o-sphere for the next little while, with light posting ahead, as I'm leaving this afternoon for a trip to that most enviable of vacation hotspots-- Saskatchewan in January! My wife is taking a course at Briercrest Seminary (Pauline Epistles) and I get to tag along. Nothing says "Pastor's vacation" like a week at a biblical seminary in the middle of the prairies in the depths of winter, with nothing to do but hang out in the library, visit with bible-scholar types, maybe eaves-drop on a lecture about Paul or two, and generally spiritually de-compress. I wish I could bring you all along.


I'll be back in a week or so, but in the meantime, I thought I'd post this song, in honour of my trip. I wrote it a number of years ago for my daughters, when I was still living in Saskatchewan and wondering what God's future held for us. It's about growing up, and growing up, especially, on the prairies. Enjoy.

Dancing with the Wind

Confessions of a Fencing Dad

Last night my son had his season-end tournament at the fencing club he's part of. Here's some footage of one of his bouts (that's him on the near/right side).

How did he do in the tourament? Well, I don't want to sound like a "fencing dad" or anything, but fans of The Princess Bride will understand me when I say: if ever I'm stabbed by a six-fingered man, I know who I want avenging my death.

The G-3 Summit

Terra Incognita went a bit more literal than usual last week in its quest for unknonwn lands, when my father took me and my son on a week-long canoe trip into the back-woods of Algonquin park. We called it, at one point, the G-3 summit (G for "Generations").

Now, tourism Ontario isn't paying me to say this or anything, but for the record let me just put it out there that there's some absolutely amazing country up that way. Once or twice I almost felt guilty camping there, it was so peaceful and lonely and beautiful. I kept expecting someone to come along and say: "Hey, you can't sleep here-- this is a private resort." But no one did; and we enjoyed some really great camping, back-packing, canoeing, swiming, rock-climbing, cliff-jumping, fishing, portaging, and just general bonding.

One of my friends talks about the "3 T's" that sons need from their fathers (touch, talk, and time). There's something to that, I think. At least there was that one night, after too much camp-fire coffee on my part, and too much frog-hunting on his, that neither my son nor I could sleep, so we took our mats and sleeping bags out under the stars and just lay there in the light of the full moon for about three hours, talking about life, and relationships and corny movies until we drifted off. And then there was that day when our camp sites were three portages apart and when we finally got there we still needed firewood, so my Dad and I spent the next couple of hours bucking up an old dead tree he dragged out of the woods until I could barely lift my arms anymore. And I'm left wondering if, instead of the G-3 summit, we might have called it the T-3 summit.

Anyways, still mulling this all over, I thought I'd post a few pictures from the trip here:

learning how to get back in again

learning how to evacuate a canoe

one of the other loons on the lake
the start of the long walk
fishing

Programming and Fatherhood

When I was a boy, the closest thing we had to the world wide inter-web was The Rainbow, a monthly computer magazine for our TRS-80 Color Computer 3 (a.k.a the Co Co 3). The Rainbow published the printed code for a variety programs and applications, which you "downloaded" into your machine by typing them out, line by painstaking line. Hours (sometimes days) later, you'd finally run the program, hoping beyond hope that you hadn't made an error in the transfer from print to screen...and inevitably you had, and inevitably you'd spend hours (sometimes days) going back through it again, line by painstaking line, looking for the proverbial "needle of error" in the proverbial "haystack of code."

But at 14, I loved my Co Co 3.

Pardon the maudlin moment of nostalgia here, but I logged untold hours on this little 128K wonder (yes, that's a "K," as in kilobyte. That was it: 128 of 'em. And you had to save your programs using cassette tape. Those were the days). Some of those untold hours were spent entering code from the pages of The Rainbow Magazine, but more of them were spent working on code of my own.

I programmed exclusively in the Co Co 3's Extended Basic language, and, though I did develop a clunky-but-working word processor that I used to type up homework assignments, my primary interests were in the far less practical field of Game Development. I tried my hand at writing just about anything playable I could think of: text-based adventure games, first-person maze exploration games, shoot-em-up arcade-style games, Tolkien-inspired role playing games, weird versions of chess, flight simulators and battleship-type strategy games. And I learned first-hand about things like algorithms and symbolic logic and applied algebra, and Cartesian geometry and matrices and multi-dimensional arrays and animation and visual story telling and literary narrative devices and graphic design and systematic problem solving and who knows what else as I did so.

I even submitted one of my programs to The Rainbow. It was a game called "Karate," where two stickmen squared off in a joy-stick-controlled melee to the bitter death. The game was actually accepted and printed (I think they paid me $25.00 for it), and almost a full year later I got a letter from some 14-year-old boy somewhere who had typed it in, line by painstaking line, and was now wondering if I could help him figure out where the needle of error was in his haystack of code...

I was reminiscing about my Co Co 3 the other day because my son's been working lately with some game development software called Game-Maker that he downloaded from the internet . As I've watched him become impressively proficient with Game Maker's drag-and-drop interface, programming his own versions of pong, and dodge ball and shoot 'em up arcade style platform games, I've been thinking a lot about apples falling close to trees and chips off old blocks and stuff like that.

After my son had taught me the basics, I thought for old time's sake I'd try my hand at programming a game, which brings me at last to the point of today's post. Because part way into the project, I hit this wall where I wanted the little man to follow a path and slash at the bad guy with a sword, but it just wouldn't do it. I tried everything I could think of, but the little man just wouldn't follow the path.

And in a moment of desperation I called out to my son, who was playing Wii in the basement: "Son! I need you."

"What is it Dad?"

"I can't make the little man follow the path..."

"Be right there." He thumped confidently up the stairs. Looked for about 30 seconds at my code. Found the needle. A few clicks as he explained in patient tones what I'd done wrong, and suddenly the man followed the path as faithfully as a prize winning terrier graduating from obedience school.

And as he went back to the basement and his Wii, having helped his Dad in his moment of need, I thought back to that day when the issue of The Rainbow hit the shelves with my karate game in it, and my Dad took me down to the local Radio Shack and bought every issue in the store. And I thought about how he told the clerk as he paid that his son had a program published in that issue. I'd looked away shyly, but deep down inside I stood up a bit taller, because here was this man that I most admired in the whole world telling a stranger: my son has what it takes.

I wonder if this isn't one of the richest gifts a father can give his son: to call on him in a moment of need, to turn to him for help, to buy out the local Radio Shack when his accomplishment is on display, boasting on him to the clerk as he does so. Because when we, as men most admired by these boys who look up to us, assure them that they really do have what it takes, in these modest but potent ways, we invite them, too, to become men.

The Seventh First Time

About 6 years ago I watched a big yellow monster swallow my 5-year-old son, duotang-stuffed backpack and all, and lumber off with him down the highway for the first time.

My 3-year-old daughter wailed in my arms as we tried to get her to wave good-bye (to this day we've never been able to figure out if she was crying because he was leaving, or because she wasn't).

My eyes misted with pride and loss and brine as I drove to work that morning.

He didn't even look back as he climbed the steps of the bus.

I was thinking about all this yesterday as my children shared their first-day-of-school stories at the dinner table. Stories of another first day, when yet again we let the big yellow monsters of this world swallow our children, in the hopes that they'll spit them back on the curb at the end of the day, older and wiser and refined for Christian life in a secular world.

These are among the hardest moments of parenting.

But the Psalmist claims that children are like arrows in the hand of a warrior-- and that when our quiver is full of them we can stand before the enemy in the gate with perfect confidence. And it makes me think: as hard as they are, perhaps these moments when we watch our children step out again for the first time-- first day of school-- first day on the job-- first day as a newly-wed-- first time holding a child of their own-- in all these firsts, perhaps we're actually watching them be sharpened for that day when we stand up for truth and justice in the gate.

As arrows in our quiver, may God make our childrens' hearts keen-edged; may he make them fly true; and may he speed them home.

Popping the Bubble Wrap

Is it just me or have playgrounds gotten pretty lame these days? It was a no school day Friday, and the first day of spring and all, so I took our kids down to the park for the first romp of the season. And while I watched them play a time-travelers variation of Star-Wars, I kept thinking how tame the playground apparatus was.

Oh, sure, it looks bright and friendly and modern when you're driving through the neighbourhood on your way to little league soccer or Suzuki piano lessons, admiring it from a distance (and judging from the amount of kids I actually see playing on these playgrounds, neighbourhood ornamentation may be their primary purpose). But up close, the mirage of play possibilities dissipates into a flatland of insipid safety. The highest platform was only about 4 feet high. The longest slide was less than 6 feet long. Nothing much to swing on, dangle from, leap off. No teetering, no tottering. No merry-going-round.

It was really just a collection of low staircases and landings, with a shallow-grade "slide" at one end.

There's this family-therapist, Micahel Ungar, who talks about the phenomenon of the "bubble-wrapped child"-- the over-protected modern kid whose every move is monitored, micro-managed and manipulated so as to minimize risk and maximize "success." He argues that when we deny kids the opportunity to experience risk, we deny them the chance to take responsibility. And this is a bad thing. I heard a child psychologist on CBC Radio last month make similar claims: our children are not experiencing the unstructured, independent, risky play that is vital to their social development. She went on to claim that the over-protection of our children is really a sublimation of our own deep anxiety about the uncertain future.

These therapists claim that we've bubble-wrapped our kids, removing all risks from their lives. And that in trying to keep them safe, we're actually harming them deeply. As I watched my kids walk up and down the flights of steps at the ultra-safe "stay-ground" yesterday, I started to suspect they might be right.

But this is what I'm thinking about after Friday's trip to the park: do we bubble wrap our kids theologically, too? Do we try to keep them spiritually "safe" by avoiding questions about God, and life with God, that are awkward, confusing, unanswerable? Do we encourage them to keep things safely superficial because of the spiritual risk involved in playing higher, deeper, further in?

Some examples from my own parenting: "Dad, prayer doesn't work"; "Dad, I was reading the Bible and it said something about doing... you know... 'it' with animals..."; "Dad, I noticed that in the Bible it always says 'brothers' when it talks about people in the church. Why doesn't it ever say 'sisters'?"

Now, things like the efficacy of prayer and gender-exclusive language in the Bible are risky topics. Lots of potential for spiritual skinned-knees and bruised elbows there. Sometimes it's tempting to bubble wrap their young hearts with the cushy answers of a glossed-over easy-believism.

But the potentially faith-breaking questions are also the faith-making questions. And if we're willing to let our kids ask some hard ones, face some uncertainty-- take some risks-- we just might see them mature into the spiritually intrepid men and women God made them to be.

Teach Us to Pray

I was reading my youngest daughter her bedtime Bible story the other night, when we came to the episode where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer. The story opened with these words: "Jesus was praying. When he was done, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, please teach us to pray.'" My daughter stopped me and asked innocently, but insightfully enough, "Dad, Jesus is God. Why would he be praying?"

The kind of question every pastor-dad waits, bedtime story after uneventful bedtime story, to be finally asked.

I explained that as Christians, we believe God is three-in-one: God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I told her that Jesus is God the Son, and he was praying to God the Father. That's why his prayer begins with the words "Our Father in Heaven..."

She seemed satisfied enough with this answer and was ready to move on with the story; but I wasn't. This wasn't just some interesting tid-bit about the anatomy of some abstract god that we were discussing. Her simple question had driven us straight to the heart of how we know, and experience, and worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I explained that Jesus is fully God, who receives our prayers; but he is also fully human, who offers them perfectly to the Father on our behalf. Because Jesus is fully God and fully human, he always prays in us, and through us, and with us whenever we pray; and because we are praying in, through and with Jesus the Son, God the Father always hears us. And even when we don't know how to pray the way we should (like those disciples), the Spirit of Jesus is at work in us, transforming our broken prayers into his perfect prayer to the Father. Then I told her that when she prayed, "Lord, please make ___ well, because I love her," Jesus was praying that very prayer with her, and in her and through her, making it into his perfect prayer: "Yes Lord, yes; that's our prayer. Let your will be done."

I was trying to explain the mediation of Christ to her, without using that term. And I was thinking of John 15-17, and Romans 8:12-27, and the whole book of Hebrews while I did so.

But after I had closed the picture Bible and kissed her goodnight, her question kept echoing in my spirit. It reminded me of a book a read a while ago that changed everything for me, James Torrance's Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. In this deceptively slender study of the mediation of Christ, Torrance shows how every act of Christian worship must happen in, through and with Jesus. We never praise, or pray, or worship, or serve alone, or directly. Jesus, our fully-God-and-fully-human-mediator, always worships in us, with us and on or behalf.

Of prayer,Torrance writes: "The Son of God became our brother that he might lift us up into [the] life of wonderful communion [with the Father], and so he sends his Spirit into our hearts and puts his prayer on our lips whereby we too can pray, 'Abba Father.' ... In the communion of the Spirit in the communion of saints, our prayers on earth are the echo of his prayers in heaven."

This is the fuller answer to my daughter's innocent question. Jesus prays so that our feeble prayers might become an echo of his perfect prayer in heaven. And I sometimes wonder if Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace shouldn't be mandatory reading for all Christian worshipers and especially all worship leaders. If it were, our prayer and praise life as a church might be transformed by this truth: we need no longer depend on our own spiritual resources to generate an acceptable response to God, because our worship actually participates in that perfect response to the Father that the Son offers for us, through us, and with us.

Darth Maul Meets Indiana Jones

One of the biggest faith issues in the church of my childhood was not the predestination-vs-freewill debate, nor pre- mid- post-trib. rapture speculations, nor even the "can a Christian lose his salvation?" question.

It was whether or not Christians could watch Star Wars.

There were two pretty distinct castes in my Sunday school: those with parents who banned the movies from the minds of their children because they suspected that Satan's face lurked behind the mysterious mask of Darth Vader; and those with parents (like mine) who saw it all as harmless imaginative fun and allowed their children to personally witness Luke channel the Force against the powers of darkness. These fortunate few were viewed with mingled awe and admiration by the uninitiated.

I'm only mildly exaggerating. I can still remember a very calm, reasoned sermon in our church one Sunday morning where the preacher laid it all out for us: Yoda is really the Buddha, the Force is based on Eastern mysticism/pantheism, and the "Dark side" is just the yin-yang principle in disguise. And this was light-years before Episode One would reveal that Anakin Skywalker was born of a virgin...

Of course, that's not all. I remember bringing a copy of The Two Towers with me to Bible camp and being asked not to read it there because it "dabbles in the occult and paganism. " As a teacher, I once had some Christian parents request that their child be excused from reading Lord of the Flies because of the way it posed hard questions about the source of human depravity. And I'm sure you could make your own list of ways you've seen Christians try to stay true to their convictions by holding culture at arms length.

For my part, I've tried to follow the example of my parents, and encourage in our children the attitudes and discernment necessary to engage culture with Christ-like courage and wisdom, not fear and suspicion. This is not an easier path: it means being deeply involved in my kids' lives, having engaged and honest conversations about difficult topics, and being willing to take some risks.

But I'm thinking about this today because, as I mentioned elsewhere, my 10-year-old son's list of current hobbies includes stop-motion animation with his Lego sets. And, as you might have guessed, one of his favorite themes (when his dad's not talking him into Shakespeare) is Star Wars. When I watch his imagination run free and wild with this visual storytelling medium, I often wonder: what would the well-meaning, culture-banning Christians of my youth say if they could see us now?

Mostly for your viewing pleasure, but also to stimulate dialogue on what it might mean for Christians to view the culture around them with the discerning eyes of Christ, I offer this sample of his work: