It was this time last year that our beloved middle son hit me with the startling news, “I don’t really believe in God anymore.” From that Easter afternoon until now, he and I have had a cordial but heartrending dialog about the evidences for theism and the truth of Christianity.
I have to admit, he has given me a lot to think about. Nothing, however, has led me to doubt the truth of the faith that has anchored my life to God for the past forty years. Actually, the examination of the objections to Christianity that I have done over the last year has made me more certain than ever that what I have believed to be true most assuredly is.
One of the objections heard most often has to do with the biblical doctrine of Hell–a subject that has had a lot of press lately due to one “evangelical” author’s surprising rejection of it. As I was rummaging through my bookshelves for some material on the subject, a little card fell out of a theology book and landed on my shoe. I picked it up and wept as I realized it was addressed to my son when he was just 5 years old. The card was from his 1st grade Sunday school teacher, and recounted her love for him and Jesus’ love as well. The Lord used that little card to remind me that the seeds of faith were planted deep in Joshua’s heart long before the insidious fowls of doubt showed up to try and pluck them from the ground.
I know that Josh is free to reject the teachings of Scripture and that if he does so his fate will be one of eternal sorrow. But I also know that in order to do that to the end, he will have to close his eyes to the witness of God all around, shut his ears to the witness of God within, and trample underfoot innumerable seeds that have been implanted in his soul from even before he was born. Please pray with me that he will not do that. God has worked mightily to see that he wouldn’t.
In The Biblical Illustrator, Joseph Exell tells of a farmer who was cutting down some old beech trees on his land. He noticed on one a strange design in the bark, barely detectable but shaped like the letters “JL” with some kind of script underneath. When he had cut the tree down and was stripping it into boards, he was surprised to find near the tree’s core the clear carved letters “J. L.” over the engraving of an anchor. With a little investigation he discovered that a sailor named John Leland had lived there a generation before and in some idle hour had put his mark on the then young beech tree.
Thirty seven rings had grown over that carving (indicating 37 years of growth), but the keen eye of the woodsman was still able to see their mark on the bark. And so it is with the human soul. Exell commented, “Many an old man, in spite of the rough usage of the world and the scar of time and trouble, bears upon his walk and conversation the marks of the handwriting which in his youth God put in his heart.”
Today was Mother’s Day. Tonight I thank God for the power of parental influence, and I pray that the good seed planted in my children and yours will bear fruit to the glory of God and the eternal joy of our families.
may come close to the truth! One thing is for certain: the triune nature of God is not the invention of man. We would have never dreamed up such a thing! We couldn’t! No, we are forced to believe it because Scripture has declared that imponderable fact to be the truth about who God is. 
