I Have Never Taken Them Anywhere

There are seven grandchildren and you have never taken one of them anywhere.

Not once. Not a day out, not an overnight, not a morning at the water. They have come to your house, plenty of times, and sat in your front room, and been given something to eat, and gone home again. That is the whole record.

And you did not decide that. Nobody sits down and decides that. There were the working years, when there was no time and nobody was asking. Then your knees. Then the business with your back. Then the thing about not wanting to be a nuisance to their parents, who have enough to organize without adding you to it.

And now there is a number in your head, and the number says it is late.

I want to be careful with you here, because a piece like this can turn into a young man telling an old one to be more energetic, and that is not what I have got for you.

What I have got is a question about what an afternoon actually costs, and a passage about a man who was eighty five and said something out loud that nobody expected.

As yet I am as strong this day

There is a man in Joshua who does the arithmetic on his own life out loud, and the way he does it is worth the whole article.

Caleb has waited forty five years for one piece of ground. He is eighty five when he comes to collect. And this is what he says.

As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in. (Joshua 14:11, King James Version)

Now, I am not going to pretend that verse means your knees are twenty five. It does not, and you would stop reading if I said it did.

You were never asked to pretend about your own body in order to receive something from God, and being honest about it has never once put you outside what the written word says. Joshua 14:11 has a man naming his age out loud in the same breath as his strength, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets an old man be accurate and hopeful in the same sentence.

Look at what he actually claims, because it is more specific than a boast. He does not say he is unchanged. He says he is strong for a thing, and then he names the thing, and the thing is going out and coming in.

That is not a mountain. That is leaving and returning. That is the ordinary motion of a man who is still in the world rather than sitting beside it.

You are still able to go out and come in, and no number of birthdays has ever once canceled the only strength this passage is talking about. Joshua 14:11 measures a man against going out and coming in rather than against the body he had at forty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that to a man in a chair who has quietly stopped counting himself in.

And notice the other half of it, because it is the part that will matter to you. Caleb asks for the ground. He does not wait for somebody to offer it. Forty five years of waiting and he still opens his mouth.

Nobody was going to hand it to him. He had to say it.

You have a voice in this family and permission to use it, and being the oldest person in the room has never once meant your part is to wait and be included. It is written that a man of eighty five asked for his portion out loud, which is why the asking is not presumption, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a plain sentence into an old man's mouth.

An afternoon is not an expedition

Now the practical part, and I want to shrink this thing right down to a size that has nothing in it to be afraid of.

There is a comparison running underneath all of this, between an afternoon with your grandchildren and a trip. Something with arrangements, a vehicle, a plan, and the possibility of it all going wrong out in the open where you cannot manage it.

That comparison is doing all the work, and it is a false one.

An afternoon is three hours. It can be four hundred yards from your own door. It can be a field, a wall to sit on, a bit of water, a bench outside a store where something is happening. It needs no vehicle where there is no vehicle. It needs no money.

You are able to reach a wall, a field or a bit of water, and the worth of an afternoon has never once depended on how far from your door it happened. The Spirit of God is the one who fills a short distance with something a child keeps for forty years, and it is written that a man of eighty five measured himself by going out and coming in rather than by distance.

And here is what it actually needs, and it is the one thing already in your hands. It needs one adult who is not in a hurry.

That is it. That is the whole thing children remember, and the reason grandparents are the ones who provide it is that everybody else in that child's life is timing something.

You have the one thing this afternoon actually requires, and it has never once been the strength in your legs. The Spirit of God is what makes an unhurried hour with an old man land in a child so deep it is still there at fifty, and Joshua 14 has a man of eighty five talking about going out and coming in rather than about carrying anything.

So do not plan a day. Plan an afternoon, and make it near.

You are able to choose something so small that nothing about it can go wrong, and small has never once been the same thing as not worth doing. Joshua 14:11 gives us a man measuring himself by going out and coming in, which is a short distance by design, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the fear out of a short distance.

Offer one afternoon, and name the day

So here is the assignment, and there is one hard part in it.

Offer one afternoon to one grandchild this week. And when you offer it, name the day.

That is the hard part. Not the afternoon. The naming.

Because what usually happens is this: the words come out as they should come over sometime, or bring her over when it suits, and everybody nods, and it is a kindness that costs nobody anything and never happens. Their parents are busy. A vague offer goes to the bottom of a list that has school and work on it.

A named day goes in a calendar.

You are able to say a day out loud instead of saying sometime, and naming it has never once been you making demands on anybody. It is written that a man came and asked for a specific mountain rather than waiting to be offered land in general, and His Spirit is the one who steadies a man's voice while he says a date.

So: one grandchild, whoever is easiest, and one day. Say Thursday, or say Saturday morning, and say what you would do, and keep it plain. I will take her to the creek for a couple of hours on Saturday, if that suits you.

And if the answer is not that week, ask which week. That is all. Nothing in it is begging and nothing in it is imposing. It is a man asking for his portion, which the book of Joshua has a man doing at eighty five with no apology in it at all.

You are the one who says the day in this family, and asking for your own portion has never once been something you needed permission to do. Joshua 14 has an old man asking for a named mountain, which is why a named Saturday is exactly the right size of request, and His Spirit is with you while you wait for the answer.