It's a Boy...

Recently, we had the privilege of watching our nephew’s birth (well, Anne watched and I came later). As I went up to the hospital and I got a chance to hold the little guy, I was struck by how much potential he has. Literally, his whole life is before him—myriad choices, decisions, directions he could go. And yet, at the same time, he was so fragile. His parents will spend the next several years guarding him and guiding him until he becomes the man that God would have him be.

It started me thinking about my own kids and the influence I have in their lives. Certainly that window of influence is shrinking, but there is still much that I can teach them, ways that I can guide them, and opportunities for me to speak in to their lives in ways that will affect them forever. Even as I write this I can remember things my mother and father did and said when I was a child that have shaped the way I think and act.

The thing that I am wrestling with is perhaps the thing that all parents wrestle with: am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? There’s a natural tendency for us to want to protect our kids from harm, but what if that harm is part of God’s will for their lives and ours? How do we walk that line between loving our kids in a way that they will achieve their potential and loving them too much so that they are barred from ever reaching it?

In my ministry, too, I find myself constantly talking to people about the better life that God has to offer them. A life that is not limited by self-serving, but a life where you can experience all the potential that God had for you when you were first born. Even in dealing with adults, where do we draw the line between loving them too much or too little?

When God looks at us, He sees all that we are, and all that we could be in Him. When I look at people, what do I see? And what do I do about it?