Reflections on One Year of Parenting

Today, my wife and I hosted a party for our son Ethan’s first birthday. There were friends, family, a cake, and one of the messiest one-year-olds I have ever seen. I know it is cliché, but it has also proven to be true that “children grow up so fast!” It feels like just last week I was carefully cradling a little 6 lbs. ball of humanity in the crook of my arm. And now I have a little boy with his own personality.

With one year of parenting under my belt, I thought I would reflect on what I have learned this year.

  • Parenting is not as hard as I thought. The idea of being a father was a lot like my idea of graduating college or getting married. There were many unknowns that seemed to loom over my head. “How am I supposed to hold the baby?” “Will he sleep through the night?” “How am I going to pay for this?” And like getting married, being a parent is something you just do one day at a time.
  • Parenting is much harder than I thought. I never realized how much children watch and mimic. And before having the boy, I was a lot more oblivious to my own wickedness. It is just easier to live life when it’s just you and your spouse, the two of you conquering the world. But when you add a kid to the equation, life has the potential to get complicated and convicting. There is no pause button for a baby with an overwhelmed poo diaper.
  • Multi-ethnic kids are beautiful. Not that your boy or girl is not handsome or pretty. But my 1/4 Korean boy is just more handsome. I never get tired of seeing the boy smile. Or frown for that matter, though I imagine that sentiment might change in the teenage years.
  • I have the best wife in existence. If you are not me, which most of you aren’t, you missed out. My wife is the kindest, most nurturing, intentional, and sacrificial person I know. Not to mention she is nice to look at. It breaks my heart to even consider raising a kid without her. God knew what he was doing when he paired up man and woman.
  • Parenting is an amazing privilege. Aside from salvation and marriage, becoming a daddy is the most satisfying things that has ever happened to me. The fact that a little person gets excited when I am in the room blows my mind. And the fact that I hold the responsibility to raise this little person in the way God requires is more than a little daunting. But the boy is worth so much more than any sacrifice that I have made.

This first year has been great! I look forward to being Ethan’s daddy for years to come.

Update: By request, I added a photo section so you can check out some of the photos from the party. You can also check out the Flickr page. Solid proof that my kid is awesome.

Reading the Bible Contextually

Recently, I started a series on the question, “how do you read the Bible?” You can read the first post here. In this post, I want to cover the topic of reading the Bible contextually.

What is Context?

In simplified terms, context is just the words around the words. It is the setting in which the characters of a story find themselves. Reading any literature with its context in mind Is absolutely necessary in order to understand what its meaning.

Seriously, what’s that in your grill?

Say I were to ask the question, “what is that thing hanging out of your grill?” If I were speaking to my father, or any other man who only cooks if it involves a propane and a giant metal spatula, he would probably walk out to his deck to check to make sure the squirrels had not gotten into his altar to manhood.

Now, if I were to ask that same question to a teenager during a Wednesday night youth service, I would probably get a combined response of confusion and teeth-checking. And if I had ever asked that question when I was in high school, he would have started looking for road kill on his truck.

Do you see the differences? I can ask the same question, but depending on the intended audience and environment, the meaning changes completely.

Asking the Right Questions

When you’re trying to determine the context of a particular passage, there are several questions that can help you figure it out.

  • Who is the speaker? In other words, who’s asking about the grill?
  • Who is the audience? Who’s the speaker addressing?
  • What is the historical setting?
  • What is happening chronologically before and after the passage?
  • What type of literature is this? Narratives, poems, and epistles are all written differently and require a different set of rules of interpretation.

Although this is not an exhaustive list, asking these questions can help a lot to figure out the context of a particular passage. Once you have answered these questions, you can begin to grasp the meaning of the text with more depth and accuracy.

Context is one component of the study of hermeneutics or the study of how to rightly interpret the text. For a better introduction into good hermeneutics, check out How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. It’s well worth the $12.

Challies on Personal Bible Study

Tim Challies has an excellent article that succinctly considers the question of why Christians should read the Bible. He makes the excellent point that there is no explicit verse that commands Christians to read the Bible on a daily basis. So why do we do it? Here’s an excerpt:

When I think about the area of daily Bible study I find my mind drawn to the issue of assurance of salvation—whether or not a Christian can be certain that he is saved. I think I am led this way because the Bible is so central, so integral to the Christian life, that to feel no love for it, no desire to study it, must be a sign of spiritual sickness. I would certainly never say that a person who does not want to study the Bible or who does not enjoy studying the Bible is not a Christian. But I would venture to say that the Christian life is so dependent upon Scripture that a person who has no regard for the Bible and who shows little interest in it would have good reason to seriously consider his salvation. Such a person would do well to examine his soul to see if he really has come to know the Lord.

You can read the whole article here.

A Midweek Prayer

This week, I have been ruminating on Psalm 145. It is a great psalm about God’s greatness. The first verse goes like this:

I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever. (Psalm 145:1, ESV)

There is something very exciting to me about the fact that Jesus is more than just a carpenter- that he is the King of Kings, the Sovereign ruler over every other possible ruler that has ever existed. One of my favorite verses is in Ephesians.

…that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:20-21)

Jesus is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” And he’s my savior! I just do not deserve such goodness.

This week, I have been reminding myself in prayer that I will “extol Jesus, my God and King, and bless his name forever and ever.” May God continue to draw me closer to him so that I bless his name, which is far above any other name that I might be tempted to praise.

Four Years Today!

Today is the four-year anniversary of my marriage to the most beautiful, most caring, most excellent woman in the world! We met in college and despite my nerdiness and lack of athletic skills, I was able to trick her into dating me. We got engaged on Valentines’s day of 2006 and then married July 1, 2006.

Here are four things (of many) that I am thankful for in Mary:

  • She is beautiful! I seriously married up in that department…Way up.
  • She is the most loyal person I know. She supports me better than my own two legs!
  • She loves our son with a passion. With a mom like Mary, the boy has it good.
  • She loves me with no conditions. Absolutely amazing. I do not deserve it.

An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels. (Proverbs 31:10, ESV)

The last four years of my life have been the most exciting, the most fulfilling, and the most humbling years of my life. I love you, Mary!