Tracy and I work hard to teach our children the values that we hold dear. That’s pretty difficult. They hear words from other people that we don’t want them to say. They learn things that we never taught them. They pick stuff up that we wish they wouldn’t. It’s the way of the world.

For example, I took two weeks off over the Christmas holidays. As it worked out we were in town both of those weeks. One night in the car, I asked Chloe where she wanted to go to church on Sunday.

Her answer was immediate, “I want to go to my church.”

I then tried to explain to her that when I am on vacation we don’t go to our home congregation. So she responded, “I don’t care. But it has to be a Church of Christ.”

That is not anything she has ever heard from us. But she got it somewhere.

I was raised in a loving family. My parents taught me the love of Christ from an early age. They have been the examples of unconditional love that has placed within me the desire to be a Christian, a minister, a loving husband and a father.

I am who I am because of them. And I owe them the deepest debt of gratitude for teaching me love.

But…I was not raised in a vacuum. I learned elsewhere that love, for most, was conditional.

I learned colorful terms for people who looked or acted differently.
I learned that “disfellowshipped” people should not be talked to if encountered in public places.
I learned to kick, hit, pinch and scream.

Home was a haven from all of that. It was where I truly began to see that there was more to love than what the world and far too often, the church, displayed. It wasn’t perfect, but it can’t be.

Here is part of an important realization: we can’t fully teach love. God IS love. And that’s way too big of a concept for us to ever comprehend. Let alone teach.

I will never get my mind around the love of God. It’s too big. I’ll always underestimate it.
I will never fully teach my children the love of God. It’s too vast. I’ll always undersell it.

That’s not failure. It’s just that I “see in a mirror dimly…I know in part” the love of God.”

But I must endeavor to teach my children to the fullness of my understanding. Just as my parents did.
And I hope and pray that through my life, my teaching, my example they see and touch the face of God.

For God IS love.