Pastor's Corner: Intergenerational blessing

If you didn’t already know, Sept. 10 was Grandparents Day, one of many “special” days that pop up on our calendar in recent years. Maybe it’s because we’re relatively new grandparents ourselves, but this year we took notice and celebrated grandparents in our church. More than that, it caused us to think about one of the key reasons God wants us to live out our faith in community. Each generation has much to offer, and we need each other!

Grandchildren bring new life and great joy! Proverbs 17:6a says, “Grandchildren are the crowning glory of the aged.” We don’t like to think of ourselves as “the aged,” but we cannot deny the energy, hope and sense of blessing that our precious granddaughter brings us. She restores our sense of wonder, shakes up our preconceived notions and challenges us on so many levels. She keeps our bodies moving and our brains racing as we try to keep up with her.

Grandparents too have much to give. We can offer the perspective of a lifetime for a generation of young people who struggle with depression and discouragement and find it hard to see the future with hope. We have experienced pain, loss and failure, and lived to find joy again. They can, too, and we need to tell our stories, good and bad, to help them see that they aren’t alone in their fears and their sense of inadequacy to face an unknown future.

We also have the power of blessing! God has given parents and grandparents a unique spiritual authority to pray for and declare blessing over their children, grandchildren and the generation yet to come. In those moments, when we are tempted to criticize or tell them what they should do, especially when they haven’t asked. We need to choose instead to declare blessing. It is an expression of our faith, that God can even use mistakes to bring about something good.

Most of all, when we struggle to understand the increasingly complicated world our grandchildren face, we can introduce them to the One who does understand. The eternal God who has always been there for us, also knows every detail of what their future holds and how to navigate it. He even gets their technology!

And they need to meet Him personally, because unlike us, God is not a grandparent! He has no grandchildren, only children. Your faith will not sustain your children or your grandchildren. They need to know God and trust Him for themselves. As grandparents, you cannot believe for your grandchildren, but you can pray for them, bless them and help them connect with the God who loves them even more than you.