This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXIV: Sofie and Mortality

Sofie's development is progressing at the speed of light, it feels like. From finding her voice on Sunday, to blowing raspberries at Daddy on Thursday, to attempts to sit up on Saturday (we call them "Sofie Crunches"), to being more aware of her toys, grasping rattles, interacting with lights and sounds, to noticing other babies. . . the list is getting longer. Just when I was getting used to one cute stage, it begins to disappear into the next.

Which got me to thinking. There's a tragedy here. Sofie is mortal. She will die.

Here's the kicker: Sofie got her mortality from her mother and I. The moment we, through the gracious work of God, gave her life, we simultaneously signed her death warrant. She is now covered, through our prayers, love and protection, with wonderful innocence. But we have written over her her doom: she will sin. Not because she must. But because we have already infected her with the taint of mortality, and her defenses against the Enemy are weakened. She will sin, though not because she must, because her mother and I are sinners, and it will be an example seen (though hopefully ever more rare as Anna and I struggle for salvation) long before she can cognize that when she sees her Daddy swear in anger, when she sees her Momma snap at another driver in impatience, calling him a fool, that these things are sins.

She will die because she inherits from us the contagion of death. She will die because one day, God forbid, she will follow the example of her parents and sin. Her punishment will have been sealed by her own act.

This is monstrous. This is not a happy thought for a new dad and his beautiful and gloriously innocent little girl. This is a hellish outrage. But it is a fact.

Still the Gospel brings to me, the Good News.

Yesterday's Gospel reading was of Jesus' raising Jairus' daughter from death. It's very clear from the text: the father's faith saved the daughter. This is the principle of the Christian home. Think of the Philippian jailer. Think of Lydia. Think of 1 Corinthians 7. But when Father preached on these words, and said, "The father's faith saved the daughter," my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. What a combined feeling of the utter weight of such responsibility and the hope at what Jesus could accomplish!

There is a way that my giving death to Sofie, by her conception and by my own miserable example, can be undone. Not through my own efforts, except by way of testimony, of witness, of martyrdom. But by the compassionate and undeserved work of Christ. The evil that I do, by his grace, may be countered by the daily, moment-by-moment labor of carrying my cross. My little girl will see me sin. But the greater testimony can be that my own struggles, the co-labors of the Saints who are our intercessors, but most of all the glorious inbreaking of God that makes all these struggles possible and efficacious--all of this can be the means for her own salvation.

Through my faith and prayers, Sofie will indeed hear the words of our Savior, "I say to you, daughter, arise." And glory of glories, she will!