For Penelope

Today I take a break from Assembly related news to focus on something much more personal - and the reason why I rushed home from Winnipeg and missed the final business session of the week. Today is my precious little daughter's first birthday - and to celebrate that occasion Joanna and I decided it would be a fitting day to present her before Lord in dedication.

At Estevan Alliance Church we practice child dedication as a rite of passage for parents as they acknowledge before God and the local church that their children are not their own - but rather a gift from God that they have the privilege of stewarding for God's glory. As a pastor I have presided over many child dedications and have tried to instill into the parent in my congregation an understanding of just how solemn and serious a commitment this is - but today was the day when my walk had to match my talk. Today was the day I had to present my daughter.

One of the things we've adopted in recent years at EAC is the practice of asking the parents to write a letter to their children on the occasion of their dedication. This letter is supposed to express to the child the reasons their parents have opted to participate in this rite and to lay out the promises the parents are making and the hopes they have for their child. I ask parents to write the letter with the intention of giving it to their child on their twelfth birthday. Just writing the letter itself, as I discovered, is an act of deliberate intentionality in parenting - it forces a parent to think hard about what they are doing, why they are participating in child dedication and to put down in writing their hopes and dreams for their child - but then we ask the parents to read the letter in church. We ask the parents as a part of the dedication rite to share with the church family just what they want for their child and then in response the church rises and commits to help and support the family in making that a reality. It's a beautiful ceremony and it's always the highlight of my Sunday when I get to participate in it as a pastor - but it was something else entirely to participate this week as a parent.


Thank you to Pastor Waylon for being so thoughtful and deliberate in dealing with the (undoubtedly) awkward nature of being asked to dedicate your boss' child in your first ever child dedication ceremony - you did a wonderful job - and thanks also to our church family at Estevan Alliance for being our family in a very real sense today. We have no biological family out here in Estevan - no one to celebrate such a significant milestone (dedication and first birthday) with and so for us it is not just a clever metaphor to say the church is our family - we really believe it and live that way in our context. We were so blessed that so many of you took the invitation to join us after the service for a pot-luck celebration in our backyard. The weather was absolutely stunning and the company was even better - when I counted at one point there were 67 of us in my yard. Penelope, Jack and Harry are tremendously blessed to have such wonderful (and so many!) spiritual grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to celebrate with. We feel so tremendously blessed.

But I wanted leave you today with the letter Joanna and I wrote for Penelope on the occasion of her dedication today. I want to share it with you so that you know our hearts as parents and so that you can continue to hold us accountable to what we declared before God and his people this morning. And I wanted to leave this letter on this blog as an ongoing testament to what type of parent I want to be - and of my hopes and dreams for my little girl.

Here it is:

Dear Penelope, 

We are writing you this letter on the occasion of your dedication, which is also coincidentally the occasion of your first birthday. One year ago today we received the most amazing and wonderful gift – a precious little girl to complete our family. We were so excited to bring you home and introduce you to your brothers, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and the like – but today we’re especially excited to formally present you before your Church family. 

In the Bible there is a story about a woman named Hannah who prays to God for a child – and when God answers her prayer she understands exactly what it means and she turns that child over to God. She understood at a very deep level that her baby was not her own – but a precious gift from God that she was asked to care for and love and guide until such a day that he could choose to follow God on his own. Today we want you and everyone celebrating here with us to know that to us, that’s exactly what you are. 

You are an answer to prayer, a blessing beyond all measure, a treasure beyond all value and you are loved beyond all words. We want you to know that there is nothing you can ever do that will make us love you less and nothing that you can ever do that will make us love you more. But as much as we, your mother and father, love you with all our hearts – you have a heavenly Father who loves you even more. And because of that, we know that you are only ours for a short time. You have been given to us so that we can give you back to God – and to that end we promise to do all that we can to raise you in Christ. We promise before our, and your church family that we will give you every opportunity that we can to grow to know, to love and to respond to God in your own way, and in your own will. We pray for the day when you will make a decision to follow God with all your heart, and make your own public declaration through the waters of baptism. And we promise that when God places his call on your life (and he will) that we will not stand in the way of you responding in obedience – no matter what that means, or where that takes you. By dedicating you today – we release you into God’s will, even as we long for as much time as he grants us to prepare you for what that might be. 

We love you Penelope, and we cannot wait to see just the type of woman God is making you to be. 

Forever your loving parents,Mom and Dad

Happy Sunday,

Chris