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"Priceless" Page 1  | 2 | 3
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Mike Slaughter  |
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 It
is so appropriate that the weekend before Christmas we celebrate children
and present our kids before God. When we look at kids and the opportunity
we have to paint on the canvas of who they are going to become, we have
such a short window of opportunity.  Faith
is formative. It does not happen overnight or in an instant. It is not
magic. It is based on formative experiences that we have in our families
and our faith communities.
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| Luke 1:80 80: And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel. Luke 2:52 52: And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. |
We are in Luke 1. Zechariah
and Elizabeth have experienced the birth of a son whom they will name
John. We will know him as John the Baptist. John the Baptist became
a powerful force of God. The 80th verse of the chapter is the key verse.
"The child grew and became strong in spirit and he was in the wilderness
until the day he appeared publicly to Israel." The second chapter talks
about Jesus and you'll notice the same experience in Jesus' life. Faith
is formative. Even though Jesus was the Son of God he wasn't born full
of faith. Look at the last verse of the second chapter, ". . . and Jesus
increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor." He
grew in relationship with God and in relationship with people. We learn
by seeing, we learn by observation.Before I was a pastor I was
a social worker. I spent one year working in Cincinnati in lower Price
Hill at Santa Maria Neighborhood House, a Catholic social agency. Part
of my responsibility was to go into peoples' homes and make assessments
about their children. Often I would find that these kids were underdeveloped.
I would see kids almost two years old who weren't able to walk yet.
I was a young, naïve social worker - brand new on the job. One of the
first recommendations I planned to write up for Children's Services
was to remove a child of about 18 months from her home because of abuse.
A wiser social worker with much more experience took me aside and said,
" Mike, that child is not being abused. That child is loved. This child
is experiencing negligence that's not intentional. It comes from a lack
of basic parenting skills." There's a parallel in our culture today.
Many of our children are spiritually underdeveloped. It doesn't come
intentionally. It comes by a lack of basic spiritual parenting skills.
This is our most important responsibility as parents. We have such a
little window of opportunity, a little window of time. I'm not just
talking about parents. I'm talking about grandparents, uncles and aunts,
godparents. We made a commitment as a community of faith to these parents.
They're going to need our help. We need other people's help. We need
the community to get our children through. |
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| Luke 1:67 67: His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: |
The most important priority
we find in verse 67 of the first chapter. Here is our first responsibility
as a community of faith with our children. "Then his father, Zechariah,
was filled with the Holy Spirit and he spoke this prophecy." The next
verses, 68-79, contain the prophecy that Zechariah spoke about his son.
Prophecy is an ancient biblical term that, loosely translated, means
"to paint a picture." As parents it's easy to get all caught up in managing
the moment. You can sometimes go from crisis to crisis. Sometimes it's
enough just trying to run kids everywhere they need to be. Our basic
responsibility as parents is not to manage the moment. It is to paint
God's picture of a promising future in their lives. Our children are
like a canvas and God uses parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles
to paint a picture of promise. |
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