I have been gifted with two wonderful children. I treasure the memories of watching Ryan and Kristin being born. There were a couple of problems with Ryan’s birth and they had to whisk him away. But after a few minutes, the nurses brought him back, all wrapped up like a mummy in warm cloths, and placed him in my arms. That was 27 years ago, this past March 27th. I can still remember every detail of that day.
Kristin’s birth was more routine, being born by caesarian. We set an appointment and had a baby. Ryan’s birth ended up being a caesarian as well, but Kristin’s was without any problems. As the doctors worked at stitching her mother up, I got to have some immediate one-on-one time with our daughter. The instantaneous affection and love for each of my children, when they were placed into my arms, was overwhelming.
A large part of what I felt was that I had just witnessed a holy moment. I had been entrusted with each of my children, in a holy work. These two infant lives had been “commended” into mine by God. To commend means giving something or someone into the care of another. You are entrusting something or someone to someone else, believing they will treat what is given with the same preciousness you would.
That’s what having a child, or adopting a child, feels like. It feels like God is taking this child and saying, “He or she was mine. I was taking care of this little one with all my love and tenderness. But now I am commending this child into your hands and into your care. I am trusting you to take care of this child just as I did.” And then God lays this child into your arms, and the sacred trust is overwhelming.
The act of commending is not easy. I don’t know what it was or is like for God. I know what it has been like for me. Commending my children into the care of a day care worker, a teacher, someone I didn’t know that well, someone I wasn’t sure I could trust, was hard. There have been awful times when a child care worker, and a coach betrayed the commending trust I gave them when I allowed my children to sit under their influence in their home, or later, on the basketball court.
When Ryan and Kristin learned to drive, commending them to themselves and a coffin-on-wheels was hard for me. Accidents are capricious, and they can happen so quickly, and be so deadly. But even if I refused to let them drive, and I relegated myself to being their chauffeur, that still wouldn’t keep someone from running into us. Or me into someone else.
Part of what I have discovered is that the act of commending is not one big step. It’s a series of many steps. In little ways throughout our lives, I have been commending my precious children to others, and, ultimately, to themselves; and finally to their destiny or fate.
Each act of commending is risky. My natural inclination is to hold on for dear life, to be untrusting, to not commend anything or anyone I value to anyone else. So, in little and large ways, throughout our lives, we are challenged to be commending with that which is precious to us. Sometimes the challenge is more of a struggle than we could have imagined.
One Easter season, I arranged to purchase some caterpillars that would spin a chrysalis and turn into butterflies--hopefully right around Easter. At each children’s message, during worship, all the children and I would look at the progress of the caterpillars and their transformation.
What we discovered--and this became a huge teaching moment for children and adults--is that caterpillars don’t yield themselves to the cocoon at the same time. When the moment to spin the chrysalis arrives, some of the caterpillars actually resist. They cling to life as a caterpillar, rather than “commend” themselves to the transformational process. They put off entering the cocoon until the following Spring, postponing their change to a butterfly a year or more.
In pondering this resistance, this clinging, Sue Monk Kidd, in her wonderful book, When the Heart Waits, wrote:
It seems that at the moment of our greatest possibility, a desperate clinging rises up in us. Then I ask myself, “What’s behind all my clinging?”
That’s the main question when we think about all the times we are challenged to commend one of our treasures to another, whatever or whoever that treasure might be. Ultimately, with my children, as I mentioned, I had to be willing to commend them over to themselves. They have had plans and dreams for themselves that I may not have chosen for them. But they are theirs. I had to trust them and their judgment. I had to commend them to their own choices, wishes, and dreams.
Trust seems to be at the heart of all acts of commending. Can we trust the person into whose hands we are commending this precious one or thing to? Can we let go? Can we stop clinging? Can we trust?
Most importantly, can we do that with our lives and God?
There was a man who was a master at walking the high wire. To prove how great he was, he had a long wire stretched above a water fall. The day of his fete came. He got up on the wire, with a wheelbarrow. He proceeded to walk from one side over the falls to the other. When he got to the other side, the crowd erupted into applause that was almost louder than the falls itself.
Looking down at the crowd, he shouted, “Am I the greatest high wire walker ever?”
“You are the greatest!” the crowd shouted back.
Then pointing to a woman in the crowd, he said, “Do you, ma’am, believe I am the greatest high wire walker ever?”
The woman shouted back up at him, “I believe you are the greatest.”
The wire walker then asked the woman another question: “Do you believe, my dear woman, that I can walk back over to the other side with this wheelbarrow, as I have just done?”
“I believe you can!” she shouted back.
“If you believe,” called the wire walker, “then climb up here and get in the wheelbarrow.”
Believing is not commending. Believing is simply believing. Getting in the wheelbarrow is commending. It is the act of putting your trust on the line. It is the act of putting that which is precious to you--even your own life, or the life of a loved one--in the wheelbarrow someone else is pushing.
Jesus said, as he died, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In little and large ways, throughout his life, through acts of commending, Jesus discovered that God could be trusted. Commending was not this one, big act Jesus did at the end of his life. It was the way Jesus lived his whole life, in relation to the Father God.
Jesus discovered he didn’t have to cling. He was trusting and willing to take the risk and climb into the Father God’s wheelbarrow time after time. So, as he came to the last breath of his life, with the very last words of his life, he could commend everything he was--his very soul--into his Father God’s arms. Jesus died the way he lived.
Take the risk. Commend yourself to God, not just at death, but also in life. Get in the wheelbarrow. Live, by commending yourself, and those you love, into God’s hands.
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