“Let’s go!”
Melissa and I will never forget the time many years ago when early one
Sunday morning our children were bouncing “boisterously” bounding into the
sanctuary with such unabashed joy to enter into worship of their Lord and
Savior. They couldn’t wait to praise the
Lord their God together with others gathered to glorify His name. They exuded the heart of David as a
worshipper who danced unashamedly before his Lord, even in a way that was
viewed as being undignified and to be despised by Michal.[1]
We caught ourselves almost wanting to
curtail their exuberance. We thank and
praise God that the Holy Spirit did not allow us to restrain their passion for
the Lord. In this vein, I sense the Lord
moving us anew to reflect upon the love and heart for worshipping God that we
have been blessed and gifted with for God’s glory and for our enjoyment of the
Lord our God.
As parents and as a
community of faith in Christ, we have a high calling to help train up God’s
children among us in the way they should go.
Our mothers and fathers in the faith were tasked the same as we are in
our own day and time to pass on the joy and passion of worshipping and serving
our Lord unto the littlest of these among us.
As I have witnessed with my own partner, the responsibility of parenting
and motherhood in particular is a calling of great import that is referred to
in another saying. “Woman, how divine
your mission!” penned the poet W. R. Wallace.
“For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the
world.” This well-known phrase states
well the importance of a mother’s work.[2] The truth is, “the hand that [lovingly] rocks
the cradle is [helped by] the Hand that rules the world.”[3] That is, the Hand of the Lord God
Almighty. As people of the Word, mothers
and fathers, sisters and brothers in Christ, we are charged in the family of
God to support each other in nurturing one another in our walk of faith
together. As such, here are some quotes
from Scripture that come to mind.
“Like arrows in
the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth.” —Psalms 127:4
I can still remember
attending the Family Life Parenting Conference with Melissa several years ago
when these verses took on renewed meaning in our journey together as we grew in
our understanding of the calling of parenthood that God had placed upon our
lives. The picture of our children as
Godly arrows in the battle for the hearts, minds and souls of many who would
come to know the living God in Jesus Christ our Lord was an awesome vision too
large for us to contain. We sensed the
Holy Spirit anointing us to be a part of what God was doing in raising up an
army to advance the kingdom of God in our midst.
As we endeavor together to
heed the call of the Lord, we would do well to honor our mothers and fathers in
this effort by supporting one another toward the end that each of God’s
children among us would rejoice with the Psalmist in saying: I was
glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!” —Psalms 122:1. As we enter once again into the work of
increasingly becoming the Lord’s house of prayer, and teaching nurturing and
supporting one another in the Lord, let us go into this next year with joy,
honoring the Lord for our parents in the faith.
With exuberance and great expectation of what the Lord is going to do
and is already doing among us for God’s glory….
“Let’s go!”
[1] 2 Samuel 6:14-23; 1 Chronicles 15:29
[2] Sharilyn Martin and Sue Hooley, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle:
Inspirational Meditations for New Mothers,
[3] Ibid.
[4] Isaiah 56:7
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