Dear Logan, (February 21st, 2012)

Dear Logan,

     I started to write you a few times in the last month, but always got side-tracked. This is because what I most struggle with in life is often balancing the many things I try to take on. Which leads me to what I want to share with you tonight: Balancing what you love.
     You see, son, I have a habit of getting overly busy, but always with things that are good in most ways... but too much of them can get in the way of what is really important. People tell me that too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and that's true in many ways. Because of this, I fear that what I'll teach you by example is not what really is the most important things in life. So, if I write it down for you, at least maybe you'll see this some day and be able to compare what you know about your dad with what you should learn about life.
     First of all, son, God comes first. If this is not the foundation of your life, nothing else will work right. Sure, things may seem to be "fun" without God, but in the end you'll find out just how little your life is fulfilled without Him. It's just something you'll have to learn for yourself, but when God is your highest priority, life works, even through the trials. Jesus said that if you seek God first, everything else will be added to you, and that is very true.
     Now, just in case you follow dear-old-dad into some ministry, you need to know that working for God and putting God first are not the same thing. Some pastors put the work of the church before their family thinking that they are serving God more fully. They are not. God, as in your relationship with Him, comes first, but ministry (or any job, vocation, etc) comes THIRD. Don't let any pious person try to tell you differently. If you try to put the "work of God" before your family... you won't have a family after long.
     So, then, your family comes second. As a pastor, I will be very busy in your life-time. Often I'll spend so much time helping other people that I may not seem to be there for your mother or you. That's not the way God wants things, though. If I do it too much, I'm going against God! Even though I'm working "for God," the primary ministry that I have is your mother, yourself, and any future brothers and sisters you may have. When "ministry" takes too much time away from you guys, it can become something that gets in the way of what God truly has for that primary ministry. If you ever look back and read this, and you find yourself in a career, vocation, calling, or even a ministry of your own, remember to prioritize your family as the second spot in your life. Hopefully, I will have set a good example in this for you.
     What comes third is up to you. Some people will tell you it's yourself. Others will say its your job (actually, "they" will probably tell you that the job comes first... they're wrong). Still others will say it's pleasure or something foolish. You have to decide what comes next in your priorities. But, as long as you seek God first, put your family next, and are level-headed about the third through last things... you'll do well, my son.
     By the way, your mother somehow stumbled on these letters to you (about 30 weeks into the pregnancy) and started to cry. She loves you very much. So do I. I can't wait to see you and start putting you as a part of my second most important aspect of life! Only 8 more weeks.

Dear Logan, (January 17th, 2012)

Dear Logan,

Every reliable source I can find tells me that a child's basic personality and bent is fully formed by the age of 5. On top of this, every source seems to agree that a person's view of God is formed by their early relationship with their father. Now, this means that by 2017, I will have either helped you form a firm foundation from which you can live a confident and faithful life, or I will have failed in a big way as your father.

Now, as in my last letter to you, I reaffirm that my goal is to be there for you in every way I can. I desire nothing more than to give you the benefit of having a father who shows you through his actions what it means to love and be loved. I want you to see how a real man, if I can dare to call myself that, treats a woman, and how a true husband loves his wife. For, these are not things you're going to get or see in the world around us, son. This world is booby-trapping its children, and removing from them every opportunity to find out what it means to be a child of God, a real human... and a real man.

I have every intention of being there for you, son. But, this letter is addressed to those areas where I fall short. You see, son, they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What that means is that people tend to want to do things much more than they actually do them in reality. It means that if you don't have a plan to follow through with your good intentions, they may remain just that... intentions, not actions.

I believe I do have a plan on how to follow through and give you benefits that many children never have in this current world. And yet, I also know my own shortcomings. I am driven. I get hard-headed. I may focus too much on getting "things" done, and not give you the precious time I set out to. So even though I pray that I will be there in the way you need, I want to write this for those areas where I simply fall short.

If it is true, and I believe from observation that it is, that your view on God will be formed by my interaction with you in the next 5 years, more so even than your interaction with your grandparents, or even your mother; then there is a great task on me, son. You see, I am not like God in so many ways. I do try, and I seek to be more like Him each day, but I fall short. Often, I get in my own way. Other times, I simply get caught up in wanting some new thing and giving my attention to wanting something new more than being truly thankful for what I have.

This is not God. God, you see, is so much more than we could ever imagine, and yet He also reveals Himself to us. He smiles at us through sunsets, comforts us through tragedies, and carries us when we cannot carry ourselves. If I am to show you God, little Logan, then I must portray characteristics that are like Him. I need to show you what it means to be holy. I need to show you what it means to be love. I need to show you that I truly have your best interests at heart, even when you can't see how that is possible... especially if you inherit my bull-headed want for "something new."

If I am going to show you what God is like, I'll need you to know that I am not out to get you. That when you do something wrong, there are consequences for your actions, but that it doesn't mean my love for you has changed. I'll need to explain to you that when I tell you "no," or when I won't let you do something, even if you want it really bad, it's not because I don't love you or am angry and vengeful towards you, but that I can see how that would hurt you, or hinder your life.

If I'm going to show you what God is like, you'll need to see how much I love you. Not just written in words in a letter like this, but really truly see it. Honestly, Logan, if I do my job right, you'll grow up knowing God intimately, and won't have any barriers to feeling His love and care for you. Because the truth is, you're even more his son than you are mine. I've simply been given care over you for a while, a time I'll treasure, He will be your Father forever.

So know this, even before you were born, I was thinking about you, loving you, caring for you. And when we all look up and open our eyes to the real world around us that this one so often veils, we would realize that that is exactly what God has been doing for us... before we were even born.

I can't wait to meet you, son. I look forward to caring for your every need at first, and helping you take care of yourself from there. So if you're reading this from some future date... well beyond 2017... know that in every way, I tried to show you the love of God, because that's what a Father does.

I love you in His Love,

Your Father <><

Dear Logan, (January 13th, 2012)

Dear Logan,

               Where do I begin but with the truth? As a child, my father was never there for me. I was raised by my mother and the absence created by my father. The latter informed the former. I was not able to spend as much time with my mother because she worked several jobs at once to fill the financial gap created by my father’s absence. I was also raised by my Grandfather and grandmother, persons whom I hope to share quite a bit with you in the future about. I expect that by the time you are old enough to read this and make sense of it, that they will be with our Lord.

               I want to write this to you, and make a habit of it. As for us, I intend to be very present in your life. I intend to be the one to give you to your mother the moment you enter this world, and I intend to be there the day you find a wife and marry, and all that is between. However, I know that nothing is guaranteed in this life. For every moment I wished I had had with my father when I was a child, I write this as a way to pass on instruction to you, to share our family history, and to give you a point of reflection in that point in future history (hopefully many years away) where I too become old and pass away.

               When coupled with the memory of physical time spent together, I hope this serves as a point of guidance in your life, and serves as a guidepost for our future family history. It will be my journal to you, my first son, but also a corpus of thought that I pray our family carries with it to whatever end. In short, this is my heart and soul, poured out on paper. Not a substitute for my the physical presence I promise to give through the years of your life, but a supplement to it. Something that helps you make sense of your life, your passions, and a tradition you may choose to share with your own kids someday. At times it may come across as distant and stoic, more thoughtful than relational. At other times it may come across as very personal and of no use to anyone accept as an account of persons who, by your time of reading this, have long since passed. Both elements are vastly important. You cannot shape the future properly without understanding your past. Logan, this is your past. This is the key to your future.

               So where do I begin but with the truth? In the days that I write this, truth has become a nebulous word. If someone does not like the “truth” which one person declares, they simply use an adage that what is “true for you may not be true for me.” In some cases, this works with the way reality turns; in other cases, it is simply a way to appease a person’s conscience so they are not convicted by some governing reality, while also being a way to proclaim that no governing reality exists.

               This is not the way the world truly works, however. In order to understand the meaning of life, you must first understand the principles that guide it. In certain fields, this is accepted, and we call it science. In other fields, this is questioned and we call it religion. For the one who knows, however, both find harmony in a central Identity.

The ancient Hebrew, a culture well documented to be an integral part of the history of our world used to hold to a concept called “wisdom.” “Wisdom,” asserted that God Himself created our world in an ordered fashion, according to His own being. He created the world to have certain rules. Some of these rules come into focus as “scientific” knowledge, like the study of inertia or gravity. Others, however, have to do with moral law. The world gladly accepts the first, while does all it can to negate the power of the other. The ancient Hebrews (as well as many generations that follow through to today) believed that just as God created gravity to guide the movements of the planets and the falling of feathers, God also created a moral order within us. This is why almost every culture in existence has found it appalling and criminal that one human would eat another; and yet why it is debatable by only a few that it is criminal for a human to eat a deer.

For those who follow after wisdom, the understanding that God created an ordered universe after Himself is the key to understanding life. It is what guides them when the social milieu says that certain things are now considered acceptable that were not years ago, or in the history of the world. The idea that God created a certain way to live life is where we begin. For this, my son, is the key to reality.

“In the beginning, God created…” are the first words we are greeted with in the greatest body of writing of all. It reminds us there is some ONE behind history, and that our lives are not meaningless or random. This fact also allows for people who get to know the ONE and to get to know how He created the world to work. The further you follow wisdom on this path, the more likely you are to be happy, fulfilled, successful (though not always in the eyes of society), and whole. It is also, in this present world, the very thing that will bring about persecution, mockery, temptation, and consequences for failures.

When you follow after the hard and narrow path that God created, you bring both trials and joys you cannot imagine along with you. But, make no mistake, there is order to this world at chaos. This is why persons from time immemorial have found that when you “take up your cross,” as our Lord said, you will find both the death of that “real” life that the world presents to you, and the rebirth of a life that brings peace, wholeness, love, joy, and fulfillment.

My heart for you today, my son, is that you find this path in your own life, and lead others along it. Hopefully, the Lord willing, I will have been a guide to you in this. However, I am flawed and fallen in a world of sin, like the rest of us. So, I may have failed you in some or many regards to this. This fault I accept as my own, as a result of whatever times that may come that I do not take my own advice and take up my cross, and follow wisdom’s call. God gave us a great gift of free will, and in that gift the ability to disobey Him, to follow after a siren's song, and to hurt those we love. But without it, we could not love in truth.

Let this writing, then, fill in the gaps between what I teach you, and what I sometimes do. Not that I plan to follow a path other than the path God created, but that through the efforts of the devil and the pain of indwelling sin, this may happen in small or large ways. This is why the Scripture tells us to, “examine yourself daily, to see if you are in the faith.” It is also why I feel writing the best mode of communication to your future self.

Take with you this truth first. God is One. God is Love. God is Holy. And from this Being, God created. And you, my son, were created in His image, just as you bear mine. You were created to seek truth, to love boldly, to act wisely, to judge discerningly, and to live in a manner that follows after the path of wisdom; which is a path, you’ll find, that goes through many patches of weeds, and ends at the feet of a crucified rabbi, the selfless Love that both created us all, and redeemed us when we fell.

This is the greatest truth. The governing truth. This is the basis for your life, my life, and all those who will take the blinders off for long enough to see what is declared to us in nature, and not what is preached to us on the screen. My heart for you today, my son, is that you find this Truth, and that The Truth shall set you free. Live your life for Him, for it is the only life worth living in the end.

In the midst of study,

Your Father.

January 13^th, 2012.