Its 2:00 a.m. and later today we start our week of Family Camp in White River Junction, Vermont. The first week in August for almost thirty years, our family has gathered with other families from around New England for a week; a week set aside to tabernacle with our God. My children have grown up on these hallowed grounds as have the children of a number of generations. On the first weekend of August, they cannot conceive of being anywhere else in the world than White River. My oldest has celebrated almost 30 birthdays here - he will celebrate his thirty-sixth on Tuesday.
For some reason today, I realized a dramatic shift. My children are no longer riding their bikes around the circular drive, doing "mud flops" on a rainy day, or rushing over to the embankment to watch the trains chug by. They are preparing Bible Studies, planning the worship music, getting ready to preach, preparing dorms for an onslaught of teens. They are washing down shower houses, cleaning the kitchen, sweeping out cabins - - without missing a beat they have stepped out of childhood into their respective responsibilities. They, and many others who grew up on these grounds with them have celebrated huiothesis: "the placing of an adult child."
The book of Ephesians says that God has predestined us to the adoption of children. The operative word here is huiothesis and it doesn't refer to adoption in the same way the western mind understands adoption. It is a coming of age, a passing; from child to adult and embracing the privileges and responsibilities that come with it.
This is significant because so much of the world has lost, or is in the process of loosing their children. Heritage is almost a dirty word in a post modern, politically correct world. To acknowledge, much less embrace, the values and principles of one's parents is mocked and ridiculed. Rebellion against and abandonment of that which has gone on before is lauded as sociological progress. However, one's heritage is his root, and roots anchor and secure against the storms that rage. One needs only to look to a generation that has no anchor, no root; twisting in the winds of global deconstruction - because it neither knows nor values its heritage.
My father, whom I do not know, gave me no heritage. Beyond siring me he has given me nothing of himself. My mother has spent her entire life trying to atone for her sins and to provide for me what he would not. It was only by the grace of God that I found Christ as a boy and found my root in Him, else I would be twisting in the same wind that has ruined so many. I have given my life to the pursuit of Christ and His kingdom, and my children have a heritage. We may never be able to leave them a great inheritance of landed estates, but Barbara and I have, by God's grace been able to give them something of far greater value than money or land - a root.
We have six precious grandchildren with a seventh on the way later this year. We can already see that root establishing them as well. Who knows? God may, and I pray He does, grant me the joy of seeing another day of toga virilis - when yet another generation puts on "the garments of a man," fulfilling their destiny in the adoption of children.
