March 27, 2007 | Papa Smith

In a million years

I never thought, in a million years, I’d be sitting here. Watching my boy bathe in the tub, find his way through toys that work together and those that don’t, getting frustrated along the way. Learning to gripe. Learning to hope. Learning to do. Learning to love.

I never thought, in a million years, that I would finish work to hear my wife tell me that our 19mo old son put his hand on his brother this morning and said “pray”, and then mumbled some gobbledygook prayer under his prayer finishing with a loud “Amen”. Apparently our little Brighton is a healer. Whats amazing, is that I would stake my life on the hope that the Holy Spirit absolutely loved that one.

In a million years, I never thought I could write something like the following, which I genuinely feel the Spirit helped me write this morning.

You’re family is your castle. Your King is Jesus. Your job is not to fight for him. He has the only sword in your camp. The great ‘backwards’ thing about the good news, is that the way we fight the enemy is to be loved by our king. Let him hold your hand and the enemy loses an eye. Let him touch your face and stair into your eyes and the enemy loses a batallion. Let him kiss your lips and love your soul and the enemy goes home.

Of course, the enemy might only go home for a few minutes, and so we continue to long for the day when a million years with Jesus seems only like an afternoon in the soft sun.

Today, I’m thankful for the wealth of being a father, son, husband, brother, and friend to and with a few people here in this hard place. Five years ago, I would never have thought I could be thankful for anything this side of heaven, not in a million years.