Future Thoughts / Son Sounds

On Halloween (of all days!), Melissa and I welcomed Greyson Alan into the world.

He was nine days overdue. An induction was scheduled, and we deliberately scheduled the induction for a day that was NOT Halloween because we thought that was just too creepy.



Wouldn't you know it, the little twirp decided to come that day anyway. Sigh - kids are rebelling younger and younger these days.

Or, maybe he just really wanted to see his big sister's costume. Here is a pic of her at the day care Halloween party. She's a hula girl. We really wanted her to be a princess, but she wouldn't wear the costume. I guess something about an orange cellophane skirt appeals to her Halloween fashion sense. I just get a kick out of the way she's wearing it like a middle-aged man wears his trousers. (BTW, you can click on any of these pictures to make them bigger.)










In any case, Mom and baby are doing just fine. Madelyn has adjusted to the new addition very well so far. We, of course, have taken way too many pictures to post. Below is one of my favorites. Everytime I see it, I put a different caption on it - like, "I swear, that fish was this big." -or- "Next time, let's make the canal a little bigger." I'm thinking of putting this picture in my cube at work, but I need a better caption than my tired mind can come up with. Any ideas?

On another note, I'm consistently surprised how loud newborns are. Sure, there's the crying, but that's to be expected. But the grunting, the groaning, the smacking, the constanst rustle of limbs flailing is totally out of control. In my experience, parents exhaustion isn't so much from the baby crying as it is from the parents waking up every 15 mins when the baby makes a giant, house-shaking lip-smack.


But the other day as I looked at him sleeping, I got to thinking about the future. What will my children look like when they're adults? What will they look like when they're old? What will their children or grandchildren look like? In the future, what will they know that we don't know now? What will a Christian worldview look like in three generations?

It is with that last question that I camped out for a while. Ultimately, as evangelicals, we believe in a cataclysmic end things as we know them, followed by consumation with Christ. But it seems to me that the Biblical authors thought it would come in their lifetime. It didn't. Neither did it happen in their children's life time, nor their grandchildren's lifetime. It hasn't happened for 2000 years.

Nevertheless, all my life I've heard people say, "I just hope Jesus come back before that happens." or "I hope Jesus comes back soon." People have been saying that for 2000 years. What if it is another 2000 years before his return? What if it is 10,000, or a million, or a billion years? What if our sun is burned out and our solar system destroyed by the ravages of time before Christ returns? What then?

Does such a thought change the way that we, as Christians, live our life and approach the world? Should it?