Ben Patterson recounts a family vacation:
The six of us have stopped in Blythe, California, to use the rest room in a McDonald’s restaurant. Blythe is a town on the California side of the Colorado River. Picture me standing there holding my daughter, a few feet from the restroom doors, as a gorgeous young woman I have come to call The Babe from Blythe emerges from behind those doors. I’ll avoid as many details as I can, but she was sexy, tan, and dressed as, well, young women are wont to dress in warm desert climates. And she was looking right at me, smiling warmly! My fatigued mind was suddenly focused. I straightened up and smiled back, flushed with the adolescent conceit that even though I was much older than she was, I must still remain a very attractive man. Babes still take notice! Our smiles and eyes met for longer than could be merely a random encounter as she walked past me.
It was then I noticed my reflection in the mirror along the wall and saw who she was smiling at. It was me, all right, but it wasn’t Ben Patterson the Mature Hunk. It was Ben Patterson, Mary’s daddy. He was middle-aged, a little lumpy, and he was holding a precious child. That’s what delighted The Babe. My first reaction was embarrassment, tinged with a little disappointment. Silly fool, you aren’t what you thought you were!
But as I continued to look in the mirror, I decided I liked what I saw there more than I liked what I first thought The Babe saw. I liked being Mary’s daddy. I like it a lot. Ditto for Dan and Joel and Andy. It’s better to be a daddy than a stud. My deflation turned into elation.
Whether or not that is what P. T. Forsyth meant by God being an “infinite opportunist,” that’s what I mean. He orchestrated my lust and conceit into a blessed realization of my true glory and happiness. God was smiling at me through the smile of The Babe from Blythe. With one deft stroke, he seized the moment, stripped me bare, and clothed me with mercy.
—Ben Patterson, “The Goodness of Sex and the Glory of God,” in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, ed. Piper and Taylor (Crossway, 2007), pp. 60-61.