Dear Faith Family,
This past Sunday afternoon, a group of parents from our faith family gathered in my front yard to encourage one another in the gloriously humbling privilege and task of parenting. What you and I long for, to experience the depth and breadth of life in loving step with Jesus, we parents desire for our kids too. While we often stumble along the way, what we command and teach through our routines and stories, our celebrations and apologies, our discipline and affections, is meant to help our children see themselves and this world in the light of Jesus.
I know not every one of us can say our parents’ intentions were Jesus oriented, yet we have all of us at some point been parented by spiritual mothers and fathers and by our heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit. And while, like our kids at the moment, not everything that dad and mom say to us takes instant root, it is nevertheless the sincere hope of every parent (biological and spiritual) that their Jesus words and lives might help their beloved children navigate their own lives. The hope we parents have is the same wisdom we who were once (and still are) children follow which is expressed most succinctly in Proverbs 6:20-23:
My son, keep your father’s commandment,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
Bind them on your heart always; tie them to your neck.
When you walk, it [their singular message & model of life with Jesus] will lead you;
when you lie down, it will watch over you;
and when you awake, it will talk with you.
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life…
We never outgrow the truth of these words, even if when we find ourselves as the ones commanding and teaching! So, my encouragement for us children of faith today is to consider the “it” from our spiritual (and in some cases, biological too) parents. Give thanks for those who have (and are) raising us, and also, follow the wisdom of the proverb to hold on to “it,” binding their words and lives on our hearts.
And, to all of us who are praying that one day our children will be women and men of faith, keep at “it”!
Love you faith family! God bless.