Forging Signatures

This morning, like so many mornings, was a whirlwind of trying to get the boys ready for school. One thing we normally have to do in the mornings is sign each son's agenda for school. It's basically a notebook that the kids write their homework down in and the parents sign it to show the kids did their homework. This morning I sat down to sign agendas and signed Dru's and waited for Cooper to bring me his. When I opened Cooper's agenda, I was a little surprised and a little humored at what I saw. Cooper had printed my name on today's line and then erased it. To me it was a little reminiscent of a time when my younger sister forged my name and got me in deep trouble when we were growing up. But that is a story for another post. I asked Cooper why he had done it and he hemmed and hawed and wouldn't tell me. I told him I wasn't going to punish him because he had erased it when he realized it was wrong. He finally confessed that since I had forgotten to sign it on Thursday, he was worried I wouldn't sign it today. Basically he had lost faith in his father to do what his father was supposed to do.

Many times in our spiritual walk we lose faith in God. We have moments of doubt and unbelief. We wonder if God even remembers us or much less cares about us. We read the promises God has given us in His Word and we try to squeeze every bit of faith we can out of them. But nevertheless we fall into those moments where we try to do what our Father is supposed to be doing. In the end it doesn't work out to well for us.

Take Abraham as an example. God promised Abraham he would be the father of a great and mighty nation (Genesis 15). So numerous would Abraham's descendants be that you wouldn't be able to count them all. Abraham waited on God to fulfill His promise. And he waited. And he waited some more. Abraham, after he thought he had waited long enough, finally took things into his own hands with some prompting from his wife Sarah (Genesis 16). After having a child with his servant, Abraham came to eventually realize that God had not rescinded His promise, He simply hadn't fulfilled it yet. Fourteen years after Abraham took things into his own hands God blessed Abraham with the son he had promised. But the effects of trying to do things his own way haunted Abraham's family and still does to this day.

If we would learn from Abraham's mistakes our lives would be better off. We would learn to trust God more completely. Our faith would be stronger. And ultimately we wouldn't find ourselves messing things up and making them harder on ourselves. Like the old hymn says "Have faith in God, He watches over His own."

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