Let’s be honest. Though children are a blessing from the Lord, they sometimes subtract from rather than add to our sense of peace. We worry about a thousand and one things—their health, their faith, their relationships. You name it, and we can worry. You’ve heard the saying, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? For most of us it would be truer to say, “If the children ain’t happy, Mama ain’t happy either.”
Hannah Whitall Smith points out that many of us have a tendency to take refuge in God without bringing our children into that place of refuge. What she means is that we entrust our own lives to God without entrusting our children to God’s care. It’s as though we’ve packed up our belongings and moved into a new home without bringing our children with us. “Every anxious thought which we indulge about our children,” she says, “proves that we have not really taken them with us into the dwelling place of God.”
Smith goes on to say that “if we trust for ourselves, we must trust for our loved ones also, especially our children. God is more truly their Father than their earthly fathers are. If they are dear to us, they are far dearer to him. We cannot do anything better for them than to trust them into his care and hardly anything worse than to try to keep them in our own.”
To trust our children into the capable hands of a loving God is not to become passive. Rather, it’s to let God get out in front, taking our cues from him as we do our best to be the mothers he wants us to be.
Today, as you ask for more of his peace, close your eyes and picture each of your children walking toward God. Even if they seem infinitely far from him, try to imagine them in his presence, because they are. Then tell the Lord that you trust him to care for your children far better than you are able to care for them yourself. If you don’t have children of your own, think of some in your circle of family and friends. Take a few moments to offer up a prayer that God will bring them close. More
Image courtesy of ollesvensson at flickr.com
