My mind goes at once to a certain little word you wrote, "always." You have asked that your babies might always know how much you and your spouse love them, and most of all how much God loves them. That is a large prayer, a brave prayer, and it tells me something about the hunger of your heart. Beneath the surface of daily needs, beneath the ache for your spouse’s healing and the longing for long years together, there is this deeper cry: that the love in your home would never fail, would never grow cold. And I want to sit with you a few moments beside that word "always," because it is a word our Lord is not afraid of.
You and I know that our own love, as real as it is, has its ebbs and flows. A father’s patience can wear thin, a mother’s tenderness can be taxed, a husband’s strength can flag beside a sickbed. Yet the One who planted that love in you is not like us. He does not have good days and bad days. The love that first set its eye upon you is the same love that carried Noah’s whole household into the ark and shut the door behind them, not one left out, not one forgotten. And that same steady love rests upon your house tonight.
When you pray for your spouse to be healed and blessed with long life, you are not whispering into an empty sky. The Good Shepherd has His own reason for placing that particular sheep so near your heart, and He does not mean to lose either of you. I have seen Him spare a life that seemed already half slipped away, only to grant many more years in which the quiet music of faithfulness plays on in a home. And whether He restores health swiftly or gives grace to walk through each day leaning on Him, the promise stands: "I have loved you." Not "I might love you if..." but "I have loved you." It is finished love, love that does not wait for us to be strong enough or good enough. So hold that word like a love-letter in a black-edged envelope, the grief of the present need does not cancel the tenderness inside. The envelope may be dark, but the message is full of life.
And what of those dear little ones, those babies whose faces are still learning the world? You want them always to know they are loved, by you and by their Maker. Oh, but look around the room where you are sitting just now. Is it not true that God Himself set the borders of their habitation and chose the very home into which they would wake? That is no small thing. Thousands are born into places where neither father’s kiss nor mother’s lullaby carry any mention of Jesus. But your children have been placed where the name of Christ is spoken over them, and the first line of their story is written in a house that hears the sound of prayer. That is a mercy, a hidden mercy, but as real as the pulse in your wrist. The Spirit who first drew you to the cross is well able to keep those lambs in the fold, to lead their childish steps upward until, at the last, the whole family stands together where tears do not stain the cheek.
You spoke of being close, as you are now. Heaven does not break that tie; it fastens it with an everlasting bond. The saints above and the saints below are one household. One Father, one register, one inheritance. The very breath you use to call God "Our Father" unites you to a family that stretches beyond the eye’s reach and beyond death’s dark river. So you need not clutch at closeness as though it were a sand-castle the tide must swallow. The bond is in Christ, and what is in Christ does not decay.
Now, may the Lord Himself, who has been a Husband to His people and a Father to the fatherless, look upon your house tonight. May He put His healing hand upon your dear one, and give you long days side by side under the same sun, and then an unending morning. May His Holy Spirit draw each child with cords that cannot be broken, whispering deep within their souls, "You are My beloved." And until the day when faith becomes sight, may the Father’s hand be felt in the dark. In Jesus’ name, so be it.
