Monday, November 23, 2009

Looking for grateful children!

I guess we live in an odd age, where our children view their accomplishments as their own, and their failings as someone elses fault. I have been reading "How People Grow" by Cloud and Townsend. One of the very freeing things it covered in the book was that living in a sinful world, we would end up being sinners. We are responsible for our sin, but we have a God who is ready to forgive us.

When I was a young man, my parents bought me my first bike for my birthday. It was a heavy 26" Columbia with no extra gears -- that was uncommon in those days. I had many skinned knees and many good times on that bike. In fact it may have saved my life. One Saturday morning my Dad sent me off to a local market for a pack of cigarettes. I had to cross US 5, a four lane highway. As I started across a car jumped the light -- the next thing I remembered was laying on the roadbank stunned. My bike was junk, but other than a mild concussion I was uninjured.

Somehow I think all of lif is like learning to ride that bike. We are bound to make mistakes. Only we can decide if we will learn from them. The journey to holiness definitely has some bumps and scrapes. If we are defined by our jobs, our education, our children's success, and not by the fact that we are Children of the Most High God, we are always bound to be dissapointed. We won't always get the recognition we deserve; our education may bind us up rather than opening us up to the wonder around us; and the sacrifices we make for our children may not lead them to treat us with any respect.

Perhaps its a graduate school in humility. Perhaps no one would enter the school intentionally, but the benefits are great.

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