NIKKI BONHAM | GUEST

“If the Lord takes me before I’m old, I hope that our boys will still carry with them a love for old hymns, good books, adoption, missions, the beauty of marriage, and a delight in God’s Word. At least those things,” I said to my husband as we sat under the twinkly lights on our patio. He sat silent for a moment, thoughtful. “I think that’s a worthy inheritance,” he replied.

A Significant Heritage

We were fresh off a trip back to the US for my father’s funeral after his unexpected and sudden passing, and these types of conversations were frequent. My dad had died young at the age of 63, and only 10 days before I was due to see him again. When you live a continent away, those 10 days are a hard pill to swallow, and I was still deep in processing all the fresh grief. Heavier pieces of it would come in waves, and one of the bigger ones that kept rolling in and out of my mind was the idea of heritage. What are the pieces of him that I have inherited, that I carry on and pass along to my children? How did my father’s influence mark me as his daughter?  What are the values and preferences that he unknowingly formed in me as he loved me for all those years? What do I love, just because he also loved it? Just because he loved me?

The significance of that heritage grows even deeper as I consider that he wasn’t my biological father; I don’t carry his blood in my veins, but I have carried his name and the privilege of being called his daughter for all but the first few years of my life. Through the way the Lord shaped the very structure of my family, He built a gospel image around me for me to live in.

After he died, I sat in his closet, surrounded by all his things, and carefully chose small mementos that I could pack inside my suitcase to take back to Colombia with me. I looked at each little knick-knack on his dresser, the same ones that were there from when I was a little girl, and I remembered the stories tied to them. Most of them came from his own father and grandfather. They were stories that I was grafted into, a heritage and shared history that somehow became fully mine.

An Eternal Adoption into God’s Family

The gospel realities of that relationship were not lost on me as I was growing up. The Lord used the beauty of adoption, of an undeserved and unearned name, of a promised inheritance to shape my understanding of grace and my confidence in a future hope. I have long treasured the truth that we have “received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs” (Rom. 8:15-17).

Just like an adoption decree changed my name and status when I was four years old, an eternal adoption decree in the Covenant of Redemption “predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:5).  My part in earning either one of those new identities was about the same—I was an undeserving (and unknowing, really) recipient of a love I couldn’t yet fathom or comprehend, but I would see it lived out and proven over the course of my life in beautiful ways as I grew in my capacity to understand its significance.

As a daughter of the King, my covenant family is overflowing with brothers and sisters who have also been grafted into a rich heritage alongside me. We may not all look the same (and some days we may even question if we are related!) but we are all being formed and shaped into the image of our Father. He has marked us, claimed us, spread His banner of love over us, and called us His children. As my understanding of the weight of being part of that covenant family grows, so does my joy and delight of being named among them.

When I packed my bag to head back to Colombia after that trip back to Mississippi, it was full of memories, small testimonies to a love that has marked me and formed my character. My children see those memories around our house and remember not just the silly stories of Grandaddy, but also the history and heritage that they, too, are now a part of. I see his picture hanging above my desk, his coffee cup in my cabinet, a scribbled Bible verse in his handwriting, the ring I wear that was crafted of his old cufflink, and I am reminded of everlasting truth. A worthy inheritance indeed.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash