The Art Of Parenting by Dennis and Barbara Rainey (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2018)
One of the hardest things I have ever experienced in my life is being a parent. Parenting is hard! Don’t misunderstand… It’s good. But it’s difficult.
We thought it was tough when the kids were little. Then we had teenage girls. That was tougher. And then we had a teenage boy. That has been toughest of all so far. And we still have four more kids yet to go through these stages. Parenting is hard!
A friend of mine shared a verse with me a few years ago that shed some light on this for me. He told me to read Galatians 6:9, which says, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
This was not written with parenting as the specific context, but it definitely applies. Don’t grow weary… Parenting is hard! We will reap a harvest… Parenting is good! It might be difficult at times, but if we hold on and keep on going, we will see some results.
Sometimes, though, it can be difficult to see past the immediate circumstances of hard to the future reality of good. Have you ever been there? That’s why Dennis and Barbara Rainey have written The Art Of Parenting. Because it does get difficult. And it does have dark moments. But it also has great moments, and if we do not give up, we just might one day see the harvest that God can bring about in the lives of our kids.
Our family is large. We have adult children. We have teens. And we have younger children as well. Parenting in all these various seasons of life for our kids seems chaotic at best, and downright crazy at times. So I’m excited to dig into The Art Of Parenting. Having read other books by the Rainey’s, I know it will be a great help to my parenting life.
If you are a parent, I suggest you read it as well. You can purchase it on Amazon.
My kids typically sleep in a little more than most. And that has been a blessing in a few different ways. Especially at Christmas time.
We homeschool our kids, and because of that, we can begin our day on a little different schedule than many families. That enables us to allow them to stay up a little later than some, and it results in the fact that they sleep in a little later than many kids do.
That’s a fact that my wife and I enjoy, especially at Christmas time. I’m typically an early riser, and most of the time, I am in my office at the church before most of our kids are even awake. More often than not, even my wife is still snatching the opportunity to sleep a little more before the day’s chaos begins.
But at Christmas, I don’t head off to the office, I stay at home. I’m still up early. I shower and dress, and then I sit down with a cup of coffee and my Bible.
It’s quiet. It’s almost eerily quiet. I know that, soon enough, everyone will be awake, and then it will become crazy around our home while we begin the Christmas festivities and traditions that we enjoy.
But for a time, I enjoy the peace and quiet.
I am really good at imagining a lot of “what if” style scenarios. I must have an overactive imagination, I’m not sure. I can come up with a variety of scenarios that spark my thinking. What would it have been like if it had happened this way? Christmas is a prime example of this.
This displays itself mostly in those moments after a verbal exchange with someone. I can be thinking about it later and that’s when the perfect rejoinder appears in my mind. Mostly, it’s far too late to do anything about it, but my mind works along those channels sometimes.
I do this with biblical stuff too. I ask questions like, “Why did God do it that way? What if he had done it like this instead?” And most of the time, in situations like these, I end up at the somewhat unsatisfying conclusion of, “Well, that was just God’s timing.” Or, “That was God’s design.”
I don’t like that conclusion. It seems to be a cop out. But there are many times when that seems to be the only answer I’m going to get.
Take the birth of Christ, for example. Why did God choose to send his Son as a baby at the specific time that he did? I can think of several eras that I might have chosen instead. And so my mind wanders of into the land of “what if…” What if Christmas was different?
We wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings this year! Even with all the craziness we have experienced in 2020, please make sure you take the time to be thankful for the good things that God has blessed you with! Happy Thanksgiving!
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!
I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
The next two topics addressed in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew both are centered on relationships. One is internal, and the other is more external.
Many of the topics that Jesus address in this passage are topics that are covered in the Old Testament Scriptures. The Jewish people would have known these laws and rules quite well, and the Pharisees were known for keeping the Law to the letter as perfectly as they could. However, Jesus turns all of that upside down and makes the keeping of rules a matter of the heart.
He did that clearly with the topic of murder and anger. Now he turns to a couple of more intimate relational topics: adultery and divorce.
