August 2018

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I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him.
Romans 15: 13a


On My Granddaughter's Baptismal Day

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Luke 23: 34a 

We walked in to our daughter and son-in-law's Lutheran church for our granddaughter's baptism where we were greeted by a friendly gray-haired woman, neatly coiffed, who introduced herself and then her husband, the kindly, elderly gentleman, a saintly smile on his soft pink face, who had just rounded the corner. And so it was I was smiling and holding out my hand, grasping his soft hand old hand in mine and shaking it when I heard his name. He is the doctor who, when I was a teenager, asked my mother to stay in the waiting room, so he could talk to me alone, then strongly advised I have genetic testing done to see if I carried the gene for dwarfism, and if I did, I should consider sterilization.

You see, my mother and grandmother were affected by achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism. My only sibling, my brother, is too.

"Does [that doctor] think it would have been better if I'd never been born?" my mother later asked, hurt beyond measure. Of course, we never returned to his "care."

Yet there he was, blissfully unaware and enjoying the privilege of witnessing the baptism of a child who would never have been born—nor her mother, her many aunts and uncles and cousins—if I'd taken his advice all those long years ago. It didn't seem right that he was able to participate in this sacrament, that he too, along with the other congregants, would promise to guide her and be part of her tender protective care in the family of God.

Corrie ten Boom, after delivering a talk on forgiveness, once came face to face with a repentant Nazi guard who had been one of her captors at Ravensbrück where her sister, Betsie, had died. Oh, the way she wrestled with forgiving him! Yet, she held out her hand and did, asking God to give her the grace to do so.  

 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. Mark 11: 25

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6: 14 - 15

And so it goes. If I want to be forgiven, I have no choice but to pray, Father forgive him, for he knows not the pain he's caused. . . . And so I spoke the words in a prayer of obedience, though I didn't yet feel them, trusting that the feeling would follow the obedience. I've spoken the words, Father, now grace me with feeling them.

Daye Phillippo

August, 2018