Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Gideon George Hanson

On Friday, July 13, 2012 at 6:13am, my son, Gideon George entered the world.  Seeing my children enter the world rank among the most significant moments of my life.  With each child I find myself contemplating life and my responsibility to them.

I love this picture to the left.  For the first couple days of his life, Gideon sported a U.S. Navy SEAL onesie.  Now, don't be mistaken by the outfit...I have no intention of forcing him to follow in my footsteps, my goal is to help him discover what God has in store for him.

As I looked at this child on Sunday morning a flood of thoughts came over me.  Looking at Gideon is sort of eerie because he looks so much like I did at that age.  It's striking.  In these moments, I reflect on life, pray, and make vows with God as a parent.

In that tired moment, it dawned on me that in our culture it is popular to want to give your children what you didn't have growing up.  The "what you didn't have" mostly relates to material things like education, houses, sports, clothes, etc, etc...  I had that feeling on Sunday, but in a different sort of way.  My heart's desire is not to provide more and better things.  Rather, I am very convicted to impart less tangible, but more valuable, things like integrity, honesty, and living with an upright heart before the Lord.  My prayer is that this child would come to know and love the Lord at a young age and that  he would walk with Him all the days of his life.