Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Parent (11/16/06)
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TITLE: He was the First Parent | Previous Challenge Entry
By Rose Spagnola
11/19/06 -
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Our heavenly Father was the first parent and the Creator of all that exists. As a parent, only He could fully do what He did when He sent His Son Jesus to die for us. Oh, yes, Jesus also agreed to that choice because He too, being fully God, loved us so extremely that He did it in spite of all the pain He knew He would suffer.
I thank the Lord that He continues to parent us, by keeping our planet rotating and breathing so we might live our own little lives. Just like children, whether grown or young, we would not be alive without our parents yet as adults we quickly forget that fact and act as though our total independence was created solely within ourselves. Yes, children do grow up who have been orphaned but they have more and more pieces missing according to what age they were when they were orphaned. Yet even an orphaned child received at least seven months of parenting in the womb.
Can that child live without parents or substitute parents once born? No, not by any stretch. Can we live without God? We may think so. Do we live without God? No. The simplest of things we each depend on to live is beyond our control or creation. The air we breathe is vital to each moment of life. Yet you or I cannot make the air around us breathable. The delicate mix of oxygen and nitrogen is supplied by our God and we each fully depend on it. Sure, I could quickly run to a different air space for a fresh breath if some of the air around me became foul. With current science, we even produce and bottle breathable air for space exploration. Got room on that station in the sky for 6 million people?
What can I learn from the Masterful Parent? Patience, kindness, long-suffering, unconditional love, always being there but never too pushy unless we ask. That’s quite a list and yet I’m sure I’m omitting quite a few. Yes, I need patience to pray for a wayward teen instead of lecturing them when they arrive home late. Can I extend kindness to a smelly, homeless man when he puts his scribbled cardboard sign in front of my shopping cart? Lord, remind me how to show Your love to the rude nurse or store clerk when they finally get to my part of the line the last five minutes of their shift. Let me remember to trust You and pray for the protection of my dear ones as they leave the nest and fly on their own. Help me to see them in Your Arms of protection instead of under the scrutiny of the world’s predators.
Parenting is God’s example of what it is like to have a little piece of you become another being and then separate from you. You love your child or children so dearly and help them grow up, then you let go of them and watch them fly…and sometimes fall.
Lord, I try to imagine what it would be like to voluntarily give my child over to villains to be brutalized and slain and then be covered in the filth of the world, all while I watch. Yet You did that, God, for me as well as for the vilest of men on Death Row. Your love to us seems impossible to fathom at that depth but my understanding of such love does not cause it to expire or change.
I have heard that heaven will not be a place of marrying or being given in marriage. So, therefore, I imagine that bearing children or parenting will not be happening also. Could it be that parenting here on Earth was His ultimate lesson of love for us before we see God face-to-face? The daily practice of giving up of one’s self to another, from fragility to maturity, for their benefit and then calling it fulfillment; could it be that is the mirror of His love in us? Or is it a piece of the Father planted within us?
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