Covenant Child

How could a child born of privilege and promise grow up with nothing? That’s the question of the Holbrooke twins, born to incredible wealth but growing up as Goodwill kids.

But the bigger question in Covenant Child by Terri Blackstock is: how will a promise be kept? For the Holbrooke twins, orphaned at a tender age and shuttled off to live with greedy grandparents, had been promised by their step-mother Amanda that she’d take care of them. She had inherited the family millions and offered boundless wealth to the twins.

Blackstock has crafted a familiar story in today’s culture of custody battles and legal maneuvering. We travel with the twins, who endured the loss of their parents at a young age, been wrenched from Amanda’s loving arms and raised by Eloise and Deke, who spray their torn house with ugly lies and greedy wastefulness.

Kara and Lizzie grew up marinated in hatred, sure that Amanda stole their money. They blamed their hopeless lives on her self-indulgence. But Amanda, in the face of such anger and bitterness, never forgets her promise to the girls.

Though they reject her in ugly ways, Amanda continues to offer love and provision. Lizzie first accepts her generosity but Kara rejects, sure she is sniffing out a scam. Although she detests Eloise and Deke, she believes their world view. The final confrontation will move you.

Although the opportunity didn’t blossom, I thought I might be teaching a Bible study at our local women’s prison facility. I was going to use this book to teach hardened hearts the nature of promises and grace.

Covenant Child is a can’t-put-it-down sort of book. You’ll take another look at covenants after following Amanda, Lizzie and Kara through this poignant roller coaster. It’s worth the ride.

Breaking a contract, part 2

Most women love the lure of flowers, the attention of a suitor. There’s a thrill to a telephone call or an evening stroll in the park.

If you’ll read yesterday’s account, you’ll know I deserved no courtship. I had chosen a silent separation and had earned no suitor’s pursuit. The covenant had been broken in my reckoning; my Bridegroom had not done his part.

But on a summer camping trip, with a time for quiet and reflection, my heart begin to expand. I missed my Lord. I felt his warm breath as he called my name. I opened my Bible and began a slow climb out of a black hole.

The miscarriage happened in March and by October I was passionately in love with my Savior. I did not understand my loss but what mattered to me was that I was loved by the Creator of the universe.

I was scheduled to speak at our church’s Christmas tea in early December, now a delightful task. And the joy was expanded when I discovered I was pregnant again. I felt certain that God was restoring what had been lost.

My speech-writing tasks were easy and the outline pulsed with life and vitality.

But lightning crashed again. This baby, too, was lost. I gave the long-anticipated speech knowing that life was draining away.

Things were different. I was desperate not to lose the relationship I had just re-gained. My cry that weekend was that I not lose hope in my King.

And this time, as I sat in a hospital bed facing a surgeon once again, there surged in me a certainty I could never explain apart from my Lord. I told the doctor that there had to be a cause for this. He told me I might never know a reason.

But I knew that I knew that I knew that I would find cause. A specialist informed us, after a month of embarrassing interviews and tests, that I had a progesterone inadequacy.

Daily shots, mood swings, fear blurred the new few weeks. This pregnancy didn't start with the joy and anticipation that it should have had. My thoughts were simple: “I don’t know if I can go through this again.”

A thin little heartbeat thumped on a 6-week ultrasound, while I was still getting twice a week shots to stave off yet another miscarriage. A tiny being moved strongly in the 10-week ultrasound. Joy mingled with cold fear gripped me.

Our son was born on Nov. 7. The first baby lost had been due on Nov. 7.

I had once hoped that my friends or family would comfort me during the one-two punch of miscarriage. But what’s more important is that the Bridegroom never left my side. In the humiliation of loss and the agony of inadequacy, he whispered my name and drew me back. He kept his part of the covenant in the face of my accusations and my silence. He never left me.

The prophet Joel speaks well for me:

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the LORD your God,
who has worked wonders for you.

Joel 2:25-26

Breaking a contract, part 1

With a long hug and a gentle kiss on the forehead, I finished tucking my three-year-old in bed. We’d read, sang, prayed, lingered. Now I moved on, ready to do my nightly exercises.

I would have called myself content, full, confident. I should have used words like smug, naïve, proud. The wheels were about to come off and I was powerless to stop it.

That evening I opened a door to a blackness I would not leave for several months. That night a baby, only a few short weeks from conception, died without ever feeling the warmth of his mother’s arms.

The funny thing about miscarriages is that few know how to respond. There was something wrong with the baby and this is for the best, one older woman told me. Another said that her sister had had one. You know that you’re getting older, another almost scolded me. You can’t expect much.

I wanted to hold my baby. I wanted someone to hold me and kiss my forehead and cry out, I’m so sorry.

Four days later, after minor surgery to complete the loss, I stood at a window while the world marched on. The horror of what I could not prevent pushed me into a numb world of shadows. Where I should have mourned, I hid.

I kept the paint touched up on the outside, but the inside was as empty as my womb. No one knew, or no one commented.

My life had largely been self-powered. I knew God and I knew I was a good disciple, living a clean life and following the church code well. I was a good addition to his flock and he, apparently, had always honored my commitment by blessing me.

But this was no blessing, I cried out. I had prayed desperate prayers of exchange: “save this child and I’ll….” No rescue had ensued.

I didn’t know then what I know now. The rest of that statement would have been, “and I’ll return to our previous agreement.”

We had a deal, in my mind, and he hadn’t kept his part. I left for awhile. He apparently was moody and whimsical, unlike myself, and couldn’t be counted on in a crisis.

Hosea summarized my position in his warning to Israel: “But even if we had a king, what could he do for us?” (Hosea 10:3)

That was my point. In the crunch, what had God done for me? I trusted my own viewpoint. God had failed me and so I withdrew.

It was months before God’s persistent wooing caught my ear. Sitting at a campfire, conversation pulsing around my silence, I realized I missed him.

He sang to me:

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
it was I who healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love;
I lifted the yoke from their neck
and bent down to feed them.

Hosea 11:3-4

In my worldview, God and I were in a legal separation. But not in his. I might have declared the covenant dissolved, but he did not. His contract could never be broken. He just wouldn’t leave me or forsake me.

Tomorrow: the next crash

Marriage: the battle

The news was hollow, empty, black and white where we wanted color and song.

“I’ve had enough,” she told her family and walked out the door.

The world looks like carnival mirrors, all distorted and unrecognizable. How could this be?

They are our friends, a couple we have respected for many years. They both have a passion for Jesus and a love for their children.

Their pain haunts me daily. I have no answers, not even a need to analyze my way through to one. I feel their disappointment, the ache in their hearts in this brokenness.

I know another couple thrashing about in the muck of infidelity. Their marriage didn’t fulfill like the lure of other arms. Now they wrestle: can trust be rebuilt?

A young woman has moved in with her boyfriend. There is no desire in her heart to marry, however. She sees the sorrow of marriage as inevitable.

We still value marriage in our culture. Why else would homosexuals be demanding its right? But we have seen the smashed remains so often that many are afraid of giving it a try.

And yet the thought that there really are no permanent covenants looms like a black hole. As we follow Jesus, we embrace the image of unbroken covenant. But even unbelievers want to think that some things are permanent. They are not willing to toss aside marriage as an archaic custom. It is a bond, a permanency that our hearts crave for.

Please pray for marriages. Pray for your own, for your pastor’s, for your friends. This is a battlefield and we must be warriors. What God extended to us must not be plowed under.

Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Matt 19:6

Skunks around

A cool night breeze floated into the room, giving the candle a little dance. Notes from Josh Groban filled the air and we tipped glasses of sparkling cider to each other. He looked deep into my eyes and gently said, “I smell skunk.”

I did too, actually.

We gave each other a quick accusing look but moved on. I wondered if the candle had gone bad. He raced to the window to see what the dogs had drug up.

And I got the giggles, thinking of what an amazing analogy for marriage this was.

Often we enter marriage expecting a steady flow of candles and sparkling cider when sometimes what we get is skunk. The mark of a marriage is how we deal with imperfection.

The only thing about creation that was “not good” was Adam’s aloneness. And the only time creation was “very good” was after people received the breath of life.

God honors marriage. Among other things, it is a picture of his covenant with us. The commitment required to walk together through disappointment, misunderstanding, grief – and skunk – gives us an idea of his faithfulness to us.

It amazes me how God works through imperfect people – and we see it clearly in the marriage commitment. Somehow two flawed individuals come together as one with God knitting the two into a unity that is better than its parts.

If you’re married, celebrate what God is teaching you about his commitment through your marriage. If you’re not, celebrate the covenant that God has made to you.

Either way, you see how God values promises. Even when the aroma of the moment is a little unpleasant.

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.

Song 8:6

What a deal!

I once signed a contract that I had no intention of keeping. I was new out of college, naïve in the world’s ways, and didn’t know how to get rid of the insurance salesman except to sign his contract and then cancel after he left.

It was a desperate strategy. But what if the insurance had gone on, even in the face of my cancellation letter? What if the insurance covered me without any premium money?

Ridiculous. Imagine, however, that a day came when I was hospitalized. The tab kept climbing as tests ordered and remedies attempted. The bill would be staggering, beyond my ability to pay. But, behold, this long-forgotten insurance kicked in, paying the full cost. This insurance I had never acted upon had paid my bill.

God made a contract with Adam: I will be your God and you will be my people. Adam thought he had a better plan.

God came to Abraham: Follow me. I will be your God, making your offspring into a great nation on this land. Abraham thought, what offspring? What land?

Jacob forgot the contract for a long time. It hadn’t been made to him anyway – or so he thought. But God had not forgotten. God renewed the contract even though the human parties often didn’t do their part.

This contract-making business is serious to God.

I have failed him a thousand times but his contract remains. I will be your God and you will be my people.

His people neglected to pay their premiums and tried to buy other plans. God never forgot the contract. As surely as the sun comes up every morning, God remembers his agreement.

'If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, then my covenant…can be broken’

Jer 33:20-21

TOMORROW: Our part of the contract