The Next Generation

This weekend was a weekend of great-great nieces and nephews for Mom and Dad. The beauty of growing forward is realizing God is always doing something new for the sake of the next generation. I appreciate the fact that my mid-eighties parents are able to celebrate this from their recliners.  

The New Testament book of Acts tells us king David fulfilled the will of God for his generation and then he “rested with his fathers.” Mom and Dad fit in that category. They’ve done their work and now it’s time for the next generations. Mom has had some rough days but it was good for her to have future generations milling around her small house and scattered throughout the backyard.

Mom speaks about what God will do in the next generation. Who will he use? Who will be available for the next outpouring of his Spirit? God is not sentimental to the past, he tells us to build memorials so we won’t forget his faithfulness, but never does he tell us to hang on to relics or edifices for the sake of sentimentality. Even as the disciples admired the temple he told them it would be destroyed.

God remains the same. His rule and authority are unchanging. In our limited vision we picture God as old and grey because he is the Ancient of Days. But he is not limited by time or space. He reveals himself to each generation as the faithful unchanging God.  Perhaps the reason we are assured of his consistency is because the earth and its cultures are ever changing.

In each new generation God reveals himself and pours himself out in new songs. The story in Ezra three speaks of the Israelite’s return to Jerusalem after seventy years in exile and once there they restored the altars and rebuilt the temple. Upon seeing the new foundation some of the older priests began to weep because they remembered the glory of the former temple, but the younger generation rejoiced because they were getting ready to build something new.

As I write this entry Mom sits sedated in her chair, she fell twice this weekend, but she didn’t want to cancel the reunion. She enjoys the vibrancy of youth, and she understands the future is in their strong, tender and sometimes clumsy hand. Though she is weary, she celebrates the life that flows out of those who will rise up to worship the same God that she met sixty-four years ago in a little church in East Nashville. 

"Lord, you remain the same forever! Your throne continues from generation to generation." Lamentation 5:19