Sure, in the end, there’s a small chance we’d like no rings through nostrils or studs through tongues or ivory plugs through earlobes, but the only mattering part is that he’s pierced by Your love, marked by grace, run through with mercy and one untiring sense of humor. A world tilted as wild as this one needs a little bit more of that.
May he always know True North.
And the way to the laundry basket and the stove and wide open big sky.
Please, Lord, please — only a minimal number of broken bones and emergency rooms?
But always a heart bit tender and broken so Your love and light can leak out. May the good lines in the books and the movies always make him liquid a bit, the way poetry can water the hard and forgotten places.
When there are guys trying to score, may he remember that real men win by going last and putting others first.
May he be one of the real men who are dead to all ladders, who always go lower, to the least and the lonely and the lost. Everyday.
May he love babies toes and old ladies and loud laughing and unlikely underdogs and Jesus.
Make him one of the Real Men braving the Truth — Because if Christ is The Truth — then where there is Truth, there is Christ, and why ever be afraid of the Truth?
Make him one of those Real Men who knows how to simply say sorry, how to serve without applause, and how to give grace — because Grace isn’t some soft, ethereal notion. Grace is a verb, it’s a noun, it’s a thing, it’s concrete, it’s like air. Just try living without it.
Make him one of the Real Men fighting injustice — because he knows the peace of Christ.
Make him one of the Real Men taking peer pressure – because it only makes him stronger in Christ.
Make him one of the Real Man taking responsibility for his body. Responsible men — are response-able. Make this his job. A woman has her’s. Have him focus on his. Real Men don’t focus responsibility on the women staying “pure” because none of us are pure but focus on the men not pressuring — because no one tries to crush a diamond.
Let Christ captivate him and not the glossy magazine covers of the Walmart checkout. Because Real Men don’t objectify alluring women. Real Men edify all women.
Make him one of the few men saturated by the Book, who doesn’t care whether that’s cool or not, because the absolute bottom line is: Unless a man looks to Jesus, a man doesn’t know how to treat a woman.
May he never stop looking to Jesus.
May he feel what he feels, may he wear his heart be on his sleeve, may his life plant a million seeds of happiness before he’s planted.
And may his face always be willing to face the wind, may his knees always be willing to bend, and may every one of his steep inclines, incline him more toward You.
This world needs to more than a few good men to tilt and lean a lot more wildly like that.
In the name of the Son who will never leave our sons…
Amen.
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