When Heaven Opens

While sitting at my computer early one Tuesday morning I had a “W.H.O.O.S.H.” moment.

Preparing to paste a tiny piece of information from one document into another, I hit what I thought were the right keys and waited for the magical transference. My eyes widened though, when words far different from the ones I had expected to see appeared on the screen. Obviously I had forgotten to “copy” before I “pasted.” I said aloud, “What’s going on here?” and tried to comprehend the content of this phantom paragraph.

You know what it’s like. You sit down to a computer where your kids have been looking at who-knows-what, never knowing what dark secrets lie one keystroke away. You have this gnawing fear that your child will forget to delete a hair-graying URL or that you’ll stumble upon a spine-chilling confession he has written into a poem—something about his involvement in drugs or witchcraft, or persistent thoughts about suicide. Or—perish the thought—that he secretly wants to take up the bagpipes.

You suppress the fear that you’ll catch a heart-breaking glimpse of your precious son’s struggling, sinful soul. I gawked at words that slowly began to make sense. “Aha!” It was an excerpt from a paper that my high school sophomore son had been writing the night before for a science class. I read:

The theory of evolution is just that, a theory. It is in no way proven; it is merely an idea of how the earth came to be. The theory lacks the evidence necessary to make it credible. Bolton Davidheiser, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins University, wrote, “The non-scientific public has great faith in what a paleontologist can do with a single bone.” The so-called missing links that would prove that one species evolved into a completely new species are just that: missing.

Now I don’t know where you stand on the Creation vs. Evolution debate, and my purpose here is not to change your belief system (however if you’ve got a few hours I’d love to share some interesting information on one of my favorite subjects). My purpose is to point out that I had no earthly idea that my son had been infected with some of the passion his preacher dad has for this heavenly subject. That is until I caught him doing something great.

When you catch your kids leaving something on the computer, what you don’t expect is them drawing a line in the public school’s sand; throwing down a gigantic, politically incorrect gauntlet; standing firm on God’s Word as a credible source of information, despite the controversy that could easily ensue.

And you know as well as I do that sophomores in high school are at the summit of their highly personal mountain of self-consciousness. They will go to sacrificial lengths to maintain their “coolness.” And yet I caught my son writing words like:

In summary, this paper has presented Biblical fact, scientific evidence, and testimonies of former evolutionists who have changed their philosophy to that of creationism.

Whoosh!

For lack of a better term I borrowed the “Whoosh” word and filled in the blanks to an acrostic, “When Heaven Opens Over Simple Happenings.” For me, heaven opened over that simple discovery. If you had taken a snapshot of me in my little chair behind that little computer, you probably would have seen a shaft of light coming down from above, illuminating that tiny space which had become a little worship center. Was that ringing in my ears from too much coffee or were those angels singing?

Not wanting to let him know that I snooped into his documents, I kept the secret to myself and silently worshiped: Thank you, Lord, that my son’s faith is becoming real. Thank you that he’s willing to stick his neck out, willing to thoughtfully debate with others who may become hostile in their disagreement with his views. Thank you, Father, that he has a faith foundation strong enough and personal enough that he is willing to engage his subculture with dangerously different ideas than the norm.

Fortunately, my son kept me from agonizing over my secret discovery. Shortly after I stumbled onto his secret stash he asked me to read his paper. He nonchalantly handed it to me and said, “I’m supposed to have someone proofread this. Wanna help?” Did I?

On his way out the door to school the next morning, I patted him on the back and said, “Great job on the paper, son. That ought to get ’em talkin’.” He grinned back. “Thanks, Dad.”

Whoosh!

Don’t you just love it when a tiny portal of heaven opens over a simple happening?

Blessings on you, fellow pilgrim parent. My prayer is that you’ll catch your kid doing something great this week. When you do, enjoy the whoosh.

Clark Cothern is the Senior Pastor of Living Water Community Church, Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the author of At the Heart of Every Great Father (Multnomah Publishers).

To respond to this newsletter. Write to Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.