Jan. 29th-That God’s presence would INVADE my children
(Matthew 19:1-15)
I am a product of divorce. I have no way of knowing the overall impact that my parents’ divorce has had on my life. Would my life look any different had my biological parents stayed together? I’m 99.9% sure that it would have. Would my life have turned out better? I am 100% sure that it is an unknowable and pointless question…though I am pretty confident that in my case the answer is no. I have very good reasons for believing that.
I had never really thought about today’s verses as one passage before. We tend to separate verses 1 thru 12 from verses 13 thru 15 by a little subheading…makes for a nice sermon text or a devotional or something. It could be argued that Jesus stating His position on marriage/divorce and praying for children happened in the same setting.
I understand that I am touching on a sensitive subject…the elephant in the room. I pastor a church in which maybe 50% of adults are divorced and many of them re-remarried. I will never talk someone into divorce nor will I ever talk someone into getting married (except for the time I had to convince Christa to marry me). I don’t believe that divorce is ever good any more than I think that getting married without commitment is ever good. (Please don’t respond with exceptional circumstances where it could be considered good, I’m not interested in arguing.) The point of this broad thought is that in both cases, I believe that good CAN come from it.
If you take this as any sort of indictment as it relates to your own history, then you’ve missed my point. For me, it all boils down to the kids. I get pretty uptight when I hear someone try to make the argument that divorce (or remarriage) doesn’t have a significant effect on kids. It’s an uphill battle to convince me, given my own experience and the experiences that I’ve observed during years of counseling friends and strangers.
In this passage, Jesus acknowledges divorce (and that He doesn’t like it) and then goes on to pray for the children and to encourage parents to let the children come to Him. What is happening here? He doesn’t just seem to be acknowledging that He likes children. I take this as an indicator that a relationship with Jesus is exactly what needs to happen in light of divorce. An early relationship with Jesus was the perfect divorce medicine.
For me, that is exactly what charted the course of my life. I met Jesus at the age of 5 after my parent’s divorce. I can only wonder what my life would look like now had I not met Jesus when I was a child. I am confident that this relationship saw me through quite a few rough patches stemming from what amounted to abandonment by my father and the arrival of an angry step-father.
I am who I am. I place no blame on my history for the mistakes I’ve made and the failures I’ve accomplished. I’m responsible for my actions and my attitudes and will be held accountable by God for them. I will not be one that blames everything else for his shortcomings. I try to raise my own children with an identical mindset but it is their relationship with Jesus that will determine their future.
"Jesus, I come to You with children on my heart. They are so innocent and uncorrupted by society. Guard their hearts as they grow. Let not religiosity or secularism entangle them as they are discovering who they are in You."
No comments:
Post a Comment