Children- Gifts from God

The wonderful gift of life begins at a time unknown to the world. Even the womb that carries it is unaware of its presence until at least the baby is in its second week of existence.
" Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." (Jeremiah 1: 5)
"Thus says The Lord, your creator,..... You are mine" (Isaiah 43:1)

This is a fact that we should keep reminding ourselves from time to time ,that our children are not really ours, but simply gifts from God to love and nurture for a short period of time .They belong truly and completely to God their true and original maker. We forget this fact too often and try to bring them up in ways most pleasing in the eyes of the society and a lot of times to bring honor and pride to us parents ( most of the time it doesn't work out that way anyways :-)!) .Is that why God has placed them in our hands? Did God give them to satisfy our needs and desires and use them so that the people around us will say that we did a great job bringing them up?

Let's see. Some kids were playing outside and they had mud all over them. Another family visited them at that time.They are thinking "look at the way these people are bringing them up ,worse than pigs!" On the other hand what will God be saying about them? Will he be responding in the same way those visitors responded? What is God looking for in our children? Is he looking at our children and asking , are these kids elegant in their ways, refined in character, 'coolest' kid of all, smart enough to get into the 'best college' that ever existed? Are they talented enough? Do they have the best career that earns the highest salary?

That's easier to say but with the competition around, how are they going to survive? There comes the answer again , aren't they God's children? Isn't he more concerned about every aspect of their lives than we are? Well I truly believe that we have to give the best of everything to the children that God placed in our hands, but isn't there something else to add to it? The best of everything in ways that the Lord finds best and perfect for them? Won't that be different for each and every child as God's call is different and unique for each one of them ( except for the one that we are all called to become saints)?

There is a really reassuring fact about reminding ourselves from where our children come. After doing everything possible within our limits and praying for them to live God's way, they still choose, in some period of their lives, to take some other road, or if something happens in their lives which wasn't under our control that might cause some damage in the way, the fact that they are His children, and He loves them more than we ever could and that He is capable enough to change all experiences for their good and for His greater glory, is something we would always be thankful for.

There is something else I think should come to our minds when reminding ourselves that our children really belongs to God. The fact that each and every child around us is as precious in the eyes of our Lord just as ' our' kids . I think we, too often, forget that the kid next door is as wonderful and precious as the ones inside ours. Don't we have the responsibility to love them and help them too since they are brothers and sisters to our kids in Christ? Shouldn't we spend some time to talk to them and encourage them and pray for them? Especially the ' troubled ' ones? Or are we gonna sit around and complain how bad a work their parents did in bringing them up? (They probably might be sitting around looking at us and saying the same thing! :-) )

I really don't think that God placed our children in our hands and in our homes because he thought we would be perfect parents. He made us all so different with different talents (and a pretty big bag of issues , which by the way he didn't give us :-) ) . He simply gives them into our hands and asks us to trust in Him to bring up these children in ways that would help them be what He wants them to be. We gotta believe that He's gonna do a great job even though it might not be the paths that we would have taken.

We should be really tuned in to him and tuned out of the world to be able to hear what he really wants us to do ( no matter how hard we would like to try, we are gonna make a lot of mistakes in tuning in to the right station quite so often!) so when finally they leave our homes and our lives , no matter what they have become ( no doubt they are not going to grow up to be perfect but then no saints were either !) we can look back and tell ourselves - there's nothing else in this world that I could have possibly done to bring them up in the image of Christ!

God bless us all with the abundance of wisdom (which we really need) in leading our lives and bringing up our children in ways He finds fit.