When my sons were newborns, and my wife was nursing them through the night, I would wake each time that they needed to have their diaper changed, or if they woke from being too cold, or if they were just fussy. I would hold them on my lap and comfort them until they fell asleep again, so my wife could rest between feedings. Over those months, I took to praying for them, whispering the good things I hoped for them, praying to God to keep them safe, to give them a full life, to lead them into their days with courage and hope, strength and love.

As they each grew older, I read them books alone in their rooms before bedtime. And with Walker, I would finish the evening by stroking his hair and praying for him in a hushed voice, that he would have a restful night, that his dreams would be dreams of loved ones who cared for him, that his day would be full of adventures and friends, discoveries and excitement.

Now, in the evenings when I put my sons to bed, I’ve taken to going over their days with them. With Arthur, I tell him a story of a little boy with brown hair and green eyes, whose name was his own. I tell of how he woke up that morning, what he had for breakfast, who drove him to school or camp, what he did with his classmates, what he said and saw on the way home, what he played with in the evening, and what dreams he might have that night.

And at the end of whispering to him the memories of that day, of giving thanks for all the growth he experienced, I pray for his hopefulness and his happiness. I pray the Lord’s Prayer, whispering it to him, praying it for him and with him.

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

It’s the last thing I do before leaving his side.

Leaving my sons’ side for the night is, to me, like leaving them in God’s care, of commending their wellbeing to the One who created and embraces us all out of a limitless love. It is my prayer that my sons would live a long a life, a full life, and that they see things I will only dream of seeing but will never have the chance to. And in praying for my sons, praying to God that God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, I hand over control to the One who will watch Walker and Arthur when I can no longer, when Walker and Arthur tread farther and further than I can imagine.

Children tend to go where their parents can’t. Churches tend to last longer than their preachers, too. Over that time, they change a lot: they flourish, they flounder, they get back up again. Have you ever wondered what one of its first leaders might think of Howard Chapel today? From my perspective, I can only wonder at what God will do with this church in the next year, let alone the next decade.

That’s the thing about churches. They’re full of surprises, because they’re full of people, and people do idiosyncratic and unexpected things. And that’s exactly what God wants from us – to listen to God’s gentlest promptings, to imagine what could be in this world, and to take a risk to try something new (that we wouldn’t undertake on our own), something that’s often frightening.

God is inviting us to seek after God’s will for us. God is inviting us to leave our comfortable homes, our familiar patterns of life, for something else that’s better down the road. God is inviting us to see things from a different perspective, and God’s plans for us are often foreign to us.

But maybe, we can embrace the foreign nature of God and follow God’s promptings, as willingly as we embrace the familiar, the fun, the nostalgic, the comforting. Because God never stops inviting us to try something new, to see the world differently, and to imagine what might come next. God never stops inviting us to find ourselves somewhere new, in God’s company.

That’s exactly the kind of life that Jesus invites his disciples to live. Imagine following after him each day and watching him pray, watching him heal, watching him resolve conflicts, watching him redirect your attention to repairing rather than blaming. Imagine wanting to live as he lived. Imagine asking what it is you should do so that you can be like him, so that you can be his disciple.

I think it must be like walking into the kitchen and seeing your parent cooking Thanksgiving dinner, then saying, “Dad, teach me to cook.” You’re not suddenly interested in learning how to cook in the moment. It’s just what your dad happens to be doing when you ask him, out of a longing for company, out of a desire to be like him, that he would spend time with you and pay attention to you. But in the asking, you become more like your parent than you can fathom at the time.

That’s what makes discipleship a dangerous thing, if the One you are emulating is Christ. In Christ’s own self-emptying of his power and authority, in his own self-sacrifice out of love for others, Jesus restores the world and makes the universe whole, healing more than we can comprehend. Because that’s the kind of unexpected thing God does. And that’s the kind of God that we fear, if we’re honest – a power and possibility undreamt of and uncontrollable.

And if we’re not careful, we’ll live our whole lives afraid of this God.

That’s why it’s my prayer that we learn to approach God and to hear God’s gentlest promptings, Christ’s quietest invitation to discipleship, to a life of love, to a life of service and empathy.

We can start by looking for God in the deep corners in our hearts. We can start by seeking God in the recesses of our minds, in the places we dare not explore too deeply. Maybe there’s something you’ll never forgive yourself for. And whenever the subject comes up in your life, you feel a kind of mental block that prevents you from exploring what it might be like if you could move past the past and into the present.

It’s probably not very loud, your source of guilt. It’s shrouded in a silence there in your heart. Perhaps that’s so we’ll miss it if we’re not on the lookout for it, if we’re too busy justifying ourselves, too busy blaming others for our circumstances, too busy holding a grudge and preparing arguments we’ll never use, too busy fantasizing and hoping for a life we’ll never experience, too busy chattering on inside our own heads and in the company of others, because love – like God, whom we profess to follow – is so foreign to us.

The trouble is that we avoid silence, because it can make us uncomfortable.

But I think that sitting in silence is an important way to deal with life, its joy and its tragedy – holding one’s loved ones’ hands in silence, praying to God with one’s emotions rather than words and phrases, which always seem too small to convey what’s inside. In moments of silence, we can look inside ourselves without flinching. Accompanied by God, we can discover more about who we are, how deeply we are loved, how much dignity rests within our hearts.

And with that understanding, we can find the courage to love the world around us. We can discover the miracle found in Christian discipleship – that we can live differently than how we were taught. We can have healthier relationships, we can communicate more honestly, we can live with greater vulnerability, we can venture to love and to learn how it feels to be loved more fully.

So when you pray, in your moments in silence, whether or not you can manage them, may you discover a sense of peace over something you haven’t been able to let go of. May the stillness and silence of God, which sits all around us, give you the space to learn that it is alright for you to be you, that you are graced by God to be created and redeemed, formed and reformed, into the person you are this day and this moment.

May you discover that God seeks you and finds you, just as you are, in order that you might receive blessing and healing as a child of the Most High. May God’s patient silence fill you with acceptance, so that you may live each day with strength and hope, compassion and care.

May each day’s actions of courage and unexpected adventure, which were once frightening and foreign, become your own expression of faithfulness in a Savior who is always inviting us to try something new, to leave our comfortable homes, our familiar patterns of life, for a life filled with love, without measure and without limit.

Will you allow Christ to seek and find you, as you are? And will you allow yourself, your whole self, to follow after the Lord and find the life you can only pray for?

I pray you will. Amen.