Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must always be on your minds. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up. Tie them on your hand as a sign. They should be on your forehead as a symbol. Write them on your house’s doorframes and on your city’s gates. – Deuteronomy 6:5-9

Yesterday evening, having spent 90-minutes with the most excellent gentlemen in the Wednesday evening men’s group, I headed over to RDU to meet our jet-setting niece, Lindsay, who was flying in from Denver by way of Chicago. She’s running a half-marathon in Durham this weekend before flying back to Florida, and decided a little aunt and uncle time would fit nicely.

• “I’ll meet you at the baggage pickup,” she texted.
• “I’ll be the guy wearing a mask,” I replied.

Lindsay is one of the “younger” set of Alexander grandchildren; she inherited everything good and brilliant about both her parents and is a young adult with both the potential and the passion to make this world a better place in many ways. It is encouraging, in the year Rebekah will be retiring, to see that Lindsay’s generation has such gifts to bring to bear on a world that needs the healing, the purpose, the grace, and the promise that can only come from faith, hard work, intelligence, and the will to make a difference.

Faith as an inheritance:

Our niece didn’t just inherit the goodness and brilliance part from her family, she inherited faith too. Not that the relationship she enjoys with God is second hand, or that she doesn’t own it personally, but that faith as heritage is not just a gift we can give our children but an inheritance that owns an importance that cannot be overstated.

I may write more about this over the weekend, when a dozen young people at our church will be confirmed. Confirmation is a process because being raised in faith is the best preparation for choosing it for ourselves.

I’m sure Lindsay would identify with my story, which is that – growing up – I always knew Jesus because God’s presence was integral to life as a family. So my opportunity as a teen, when I began to fully understand what it would mean to make my own way in life, was to confirm what was already true, and to say, quite deliberately, “Jesus I accept you not only as friend but – now – as Lord, Savior, Guide, Instigator, and Promise…”

Max, of course, was crazy-excited to make a new friend in Lindsay, and Rebekah is delighted to reconnect with her niece. We have been a little starved for family over the past year and it is a blessing, a joy, and an encouragement to see her.

Again, as I wrote the other day, “Take that, COVID…”

In gratitude – DEREK