Looking Back Going Forward

Certain events really make us a take a few minutes to reflect on where we've been and what is available going forward, don't they?

Take being a parent. It seems like those years will last forever when first holding that wee babe moments after it's been born. Years of purposeful training ensue, and you wonder if it will all pay off...will they obey with a cheerful heart? Will they submit to God and learn to walk the narrow path? Will they love you, and like you, as they age? Will you like them as they age?

When you double your child's age and see that they'll be where you were years into married life, possibly a parent, it is a little surprising. How the hours of parenting differ from how it was when it all started! Breastfeeding, diapering, hanging wraps on the line, teaching manners, how to wash and dress, how to pray, how to read, how to add and multiply, how to write paragraphs, how to analyze literature...how to deal with friendships and standing for what you believe is right even if it's unpopular...

I think of my childhood when I was the ages of my kids, and it was so different. There's not a lot to be gained by growing up fast, being exposed to the wretchedness and unbelief of our culture.

Degrees...there are degrees to everything. Being purposeful is so helpful; it streamlines life to work within a definite worldview.

The years are so short where it is all innocence, and mom and dad can fix it all.  The bubble of safety and belief, where men and women marry so they can have children together and live together, where drunkenness is only seen on Andy Griffith, and babies are all wanted and cherished. There is so much time to be exposed to vileness. So much time to be among the lost striving to be in the world and not of it. I'm thankful that sometimes it works out to give our kids just what we want and intend. I know it's not always like that for people.

There is value in memories of family bonding and unity where the focus is all puppies and kittens... where stomachs never growl in nighttime hunger. Where children sleep soundly knowing their parents, who love them passionately, are right across the hall.

A time comes where these things are all present, but they are set among the reality we adults all know very well. And it's different then. Parenting is different then. And without a very firm anchor of faith ourselves, we cannot give them what they ultimately need most to chart the course God lays out for them successfully. Because a time comes where we cannot fix it, where the hurts are real, the disappointments genuine, the injustice profound, and the helplessness of being a mere mortal are vivid. I don't fully get that myself yet- just glimpses and seeing others around me.

I do think we can only give what we possess. And that, my friends, is motivation.

1 Cor 15: 3-11 NASB

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.