When I was younger I loved going to the library. I was a voracious reader and the fact that you could obtain a book, read it, and then return it for another one was delightful to me. When I realized I could check out multiple books, it was even better. I didn’t have to spend my hard earned allowance to get a new treasure to read; I could simply borrow it from the library and return it when I was done.
As I grew older, I went to the library less and less. While I’m sure that there were many reasons for the decline in my library visits, I believe that one of them is that I became more concerned with acquiring books I wanted. It wasn’t enough just to have read the book; I wanted to keep it – to make it my own. The library isn’t fond of its patrons highlighting and underlining in their texts, but if I owned the book I could do that to my heart’s content. Additionally, owning the book allowed me to refer back to it as often as I wanted. It was mine and I could do with it what I want.
I’ve been thinking about this tendency towards possession a lot since I became a parent. We tend to think of our children as “ours” and consider it our job to mold them and shape them into the person that we think that they should be. We’re protective of them, sometimes beyond the natural concern of someone who is responsible for the care of another and more like an individual who believes their identity is tied up in the life of someone else. We’re quick to defend our parenting practices reminding others that they can do as they want with their own children, but with our kids we’re the final arbitrator and judge. Our kids, our rules we say, and we feel confident that this is the way things should be.
Despite this proclivity, the Bible teaches us something else about our kids. Scripture says that our children are to be arrows that are shot out to do the work of the Lord (Ps. 127:4-5). If our kids are supposed to go out from us, they obviously aren’t ours to possess. Instead, God has given us charge of them for a time – to teach, train and correct them in the way of the Lord – and then He expects that we, like Hannah, will give them back to Him (I Sam. 1:27-28). We aren’t to see them as ours to do mold and shape as we will. We are to see them as a ministry that God has called us to for a time and as with any ministry, our aim should be God’s glory and not our own.
When your child is young it is difficult to imagine a time where they won’t need you for every little thing. Unfortunately, some parents act as if that time doesn’t ever end. They see it as their responsibility to direct their child’s life long after God has called them away from that particular part of the parental ministry. Perhaps this is because they think of the child as “theirs” rather than “His.” Perhaps it’s because they don’t recognize that the child is on loan. And just like the library wanted their books back within a certain time frame, God expects us to “give” our child back to Him as well, fully recognizing that they were never “ours” really anyway.