Today, during a moment of celebrating Noel's three weeks of birth, I read him the story of "My Dream and My World," the book that I wrote back in 2016 to introduce young readers to the world of vocations. The book talks about a boy who is on a journey to find out who he is and what he should do in the world as he grows up and explores different vocations — cook, pilot, police officer, firefighter, writer, singer, teacher, etc. — that could become his. In the end, the boy in the book says that whatever he becomes and does, he will serve the world and bring happiness to the world, and that is his dream for his world.
Another day, I also read Noel another story, "Noah's Ark," beautifully illustrated by Peter Spier, gifted to Noel by our dear mentor and friend Steven Garber. The book begins with just a few words at the beginning and ends with a few words at the end. On the first page, the illustration paints a world that is deeply broken and wounded—with fire and bloodshed everywhere—but introduces, in the middle of the broken and wounded world, Noah with the first words of the book: "…But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." I read Noel this story, hoping that one day he will find himself running into the story of grace, as the story of grace becomes real and true, deeply woven into his soul and seamlessly expressed through the labor of his hands and the love of his heart in our Lord's world.
I also read Noel other stories of the world: the story of Smudge Rabbit gazing at the starry night, waiting for a star to fall from the sky, and the story of Abraham and Isaac sitting beside a warm fire beneath countless stars, recounting the promise of the LORD. In that brief moment of story-time, I tried to tell Noel that while the world overflows with stories, the stories that become his will deeply matter, for the stories we choose to see and hear deeply shape who we are in our souls and how we see the world, for we see everything out of our hearts.
While Noel was falling asleep staring at pages of stories into the stars of the sky, Esther and I prayed for the day when he would have eyes to see and ears to hear beyond what is seen and heard, into the heart of the stories of all stories—things that are deeper and higher—that he would see more of God, more of himself, of history and the world, and why it deeply matters to find grace in the eyes of the Lord as the dreams and hopes of heaven become real in the world of his through the unfolding of his vocation, the labor of his hands and the love of his heart, here and now in the time of now and not-yet in the world that is.
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