Any day now, our first granddaughter will arrive. She will be both a blessing and a bomb. A bomb bringing a bit of bedlam in her wake.
Photo: A doll waiting to welcome Herself.
She will be a good bomb. Even the bedlam part of the script brings certain blessings. Now that our children are grown, we’re in danger of becoming terminally orderly. Nothing is ever out of place. I waddle around priding myself on the closing of cupboards. Yesterday Grace and I spent five minutes discussing a gravy stain on the tines of a fork. The day before, the big topic was the placement of a bulletin board. Perhaps order feels like a hard-won treasure in the teeth of a nomadic life.
Well then. In the midst of all this order, the Beloved Object arrives, bringing in her wake both joy and chaos. How is this combination possible? And yet it’s true. The most undignified and disorderly moments in the life of an infant are sometimes greeted with praise, even applause.
When I have found myself rejoicing at these moments—say, during a major clean-up— I’ve sometimes thought, “Does God view me as I view this little one—with such tenderness and delight? Does he love me extravagantly while he cleans me up?” Jesus’ story of the prodigal son shouts that the answer is Yes.
So grandparenting— with its tastes of blessed disruption— can become a new doorway for grace.
In his book The Message in the Bottle, Walker Percy asks this question: Why are there people who find themselves depressed in a beautiful house in the suburbs but might be euphoric in the middle of a roof-ripping hurricane? One of his essays explores situations—in life, literature and cinema— where our authentic humanity is restored to us, and this gift is ushered in by disruption.
In the five books of Moses, time and again God meets his people not in the city but in the desert.* And this pattern makes sense. When we are out of our familiar groove, in the unmapped place, the disruption of routine can make us more receptive to something new. Again, when John the Baptist is preparing the Jewish people for something new—the Messiah’s ministry—he begins preaching where? In the desert. Away from the familiar, away from convenience, away from telephones—in the desert. A place that unsettles us, that puts habits on hold.
Both the social critic and the God of history himself show us this pattern: When our ordinary life is disrupted, whether by a hurricane, a season in the desert, or a wonderful, schedule-upending granddaughter, then, if we are attuned aright, we may find in the midst of it a surprising form of God’s grace.
Thank you, Lord, for drawing us closer to you through the things that disrupt us. Keep us thanking you in all circumstances, because the very thing we are tempted to curse may be your lifesaver, thrown out to bless us beyond our wildest dreams. Amen.
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* Theologians, both Jewish and Christian, have mused on the fact that the Hebrew word for ‘desert’, midbar, looks at first glance to be based on the root dabar, ‘speak.’ A student of Hebrew might compare this word to others with the same m- prefix, and quite understandably guess that it meant ‘the place for speaking.’
Grandblessing 