I used to do a little exercise  with my three daughters which I thoroughly enjoyed, although I am sure they found it tedious enough.  I would point out all the famous people whose fathers were (or are) ministers.  It all started when they got interested, one by one, in Jane Austen.  Now, whenever they watch a Jane Austen movie, or read a Jane Austen novel I ask (ad nauseum) – “And what did her father do?” “He was a preacher, Dad,” they reply.  “Yes, Jane Austen was a preacher’s kid, and so are you, and so was: Charlotte, Emily, and Ann Bronte, and Louisa May Alcott, and Aretha Franklin, and Tina Turner, and Nathaniel Hawthorn, and Denzel Washington, and Tori Amos, and Toni Braxton, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and W.C. handy, and the McGuire Sisters, and Nat “King” Cole, and the Pointer Sisters, and Abigail Adams, and Duke Ellington….”  Preacher’s kids have their own pressures to deal with, and so I wanted to drill into their heads, with my verbal trepanning,  the idea that being a preacher’s kid is not a bad place to start.  I usually follow that up with “And what is Jessica Simpson’s dad?”  “A YOUTH minister,” they reply. “So,” I remind them “let that be a lesson to you.”  I’ve never identified what that lesson might be, feeling it is sufficiently obvious.

            I  was thinking about one of those father-preachers mentioned above the other day.  What a strange, moody brood of children nested in the vicarage of Patrick Bronte – and he outlived them all – all six of them.  The last of his children to die was Charlotte, the author of Jane Eyre.  She had finally married, was blissfully happy and expecting her first child when she died at 8 months pregnant.  In his journal, her father was at a loss to express his grief beyond writing this poignant line:

            There is no greater trial for a man to bear than to have his children taken from him one by one.

            Those last three words: one by one, are too much to bear.

            A parent is not supposed to outlive a child.  Job lost more children, and lost them all at once - in a single disaster.  Mrs. Bixby lost 5 sons (reputedly) – not on the same day, but in the same war.  But to loose them one by one over the course of years the way Patrick Bronte did is unimaginable.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…Jeremiah 1.5

            All of us are God’s children first.  We belong to him, and we are given to our parents as a gift in trust (Psalm 127.3).  And one by one we die – if we live long enough.  I am not speaking of mere physical death – which is temporary, but of spiritual death – which is eternal.  One by one we sin, and sin causes our death (Romans 3.23,6.23).  One by one God must experience the death of a child He himself has formed, and into whom He himself has invested a soul.  Add to this the truth that as acutely as we feel the pain of separation – our capacity is finite, limited, for we are finite, limited.  God is infinite and limitless – as is his understanding of the losses he suffers daily as one by one we sin and die.

            This helps me understand John 3.16, almost.  Without this understanding, that best known verse of the Bible would also be its least understood.    The mathematics of it are still far beyond my powers of reason and imagination – but being a dad, it helps me understand something of the enormity of, and the urge behind the phrase “God so loved the world…”

            God gave His only begotten son, so that His human-begotten children could, one by one, be reborn, and come home.