Refl ection By Scott Seeke
Predictable grace
My son will soon turn 11 so I went back and looked at pictures of his 10th birthday party. Next to them on my phone were pictures a friend had sent me of my 10th birthday. I was amazed to see my parents. My mom’s hair, now white, was a lush black. The wrinkles my dad gave me, the ones that only recently appeared on my face, had yet to appear on his.
I did some quick math and realized that when this picture was taken, my mom was nine years younger than I am now and my dad was two years younger. Seeing them younger than me is always odd, but seeing them reaching a milestone at a younger age was downright unsettling.
It was even more unnerving to realize that my mom hit most of her milestones before I did. She was 20 when she was married—I was 27. She had children, had them baptized, and watched them graduate high school and get jobs at a younger age. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed.
Things only got weirder when I considered my peers’ milestones. A college roommate just had a baby, while a cousin my age has a child about to graduate college. Another roommate is getting married for the fi rst time, while a neighbor my age just got married for the second time.
The good milestones, it seems, don’t come at the same time for everyone. Neither do the bad ones.
24 SEPTEMBER 2016
Take my father and father-in-law, for instance. My dad, who looked so young when I turned 10, is now 72. He has smoked for almost 60 years and survives on a steady diet of Little Debbie snack cakes he gets o n discount because they are expiring. Why is he alive when my father-in-law, who was an athlete, died of heart failure at 51? How does that make any sense at all?
It doesn’t. Milestones aren’t predictable. Life doesn’t make sense.
Fortunately, as I looked back over these events I saw a common thread. I see it every time a child is born—and every time someone dies. I will see it again at my roommate’s wedding and when smoking fi nally kills my dad. That common thread is God’s love and grace, and people to share it with.
Life will undoubtedly bring me more milestones, good and bad, and I no longer expect them to arrive on a schedule. Life is unpredictable. God’s love and grace, and people to share them with, are the only things I can count on. This is all the predictability I need.
Scott Seeke is pastor of Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Lawrenceville, Ga., and is a writer for print and screen. You can fi nd him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and at
scottseeke.com.
VOICES OF FAITH
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