For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:13-14)

Dad: We made a beautiful daughter

(4 year old) Daughter: God made me, and you are not God.

As I was walking out of Church on Sunday, the above-mentioned father related the above exchange with his precocious daughter. While it was an amusing exchange, it also reflects a correct, and I would say, very useful understanding of theology.

I can only pray that both father and daughter remember it.

I pray that dad remembers it when in a few years his daughter begins to show her intelligence and beauty to the world, and he thanks God for her, instead of pegging his own value on how well she performs in the world.

I pray he remembers it when this same daughter cries at some failure, which will seem huge to her. That he then avoids piling on to her disappointment, and instead reminds her that the good and wise creator of the universe made her, and he does not make mistakes.

I pray he remembers it as she rejects him at different times. First as she leaves him for her new friends, and later as she rejects him for being embarrassing in her teenage years, and finally if she walks down the aisle to begin a life together with another man.. He will need to remember the gift of God that she is, and that she was his gift only for a time.

I pray she remembers the truth at the same time, when she realizes that her dad is not perfect, and he will let her down, but she is made for greater things than simply her father’s decision or desire, and while her genes are a mix of her dad and her mom, they are not simply random ones.

I pray she remembers it as she gives birth to her first child, who will be beautiful, and full of potential, and yet blemished and imperfect in some eyes in the world. God will have made her child too.

I pray also that she remembers it (by God’s grace) many decades hence, when with tears in her eyes she buries the earthly father who loved her well, confident that the God who made her and him, and brought them together for a time by his grace, is trustworthy to take care of him until time ends and all tears are wiped away.