Someone just recently told me how lucky my family and I were that our time with the “vyrus” was not all that bad. My first thought was yes, we were very fortunate that this didn’t affect us more severely. But then my second thought was that we work hard to stay healthy and fit, as I have explained in my previous post. It makes sense we didn’t get that sick!
So which one is it? Are we lucky? Or are we healthy and fit?
It’s complicated
I wish life could be so simple. We want to paint everything in one solid color or another, but life is so much more complex than that. In this world that we live in with an answer to any question we have in a matter of seconds with the help of Google, using critical thinking along with grace and wisdom seems to have been relegated to a thing of the distant past.
Many of us have been blessed with a variety of things. One example is just being an American citizen. Just that is like hitting the jackpot on this earth, no matter what our financial situation may be here. Having our health is another blessing that not everyone has. An intact, traditional family is yet another thing not everyone can say they possess. For those of us with one, we are truly blessed.
Obviously, the above blessings are things that we have zero control over. You either have them or you don’t. But even considering all of these blessings, they are no guarantee for future happiness, health, and success. For yet another example, let’s say a healthy child decides to start smoking at the age of 12 and ends up getting lung cancer at 50. Did they lose their luck? Or is it something else? Such as life choices? Note: Something to keep in mind is that not everyone who smokes their entire lives ends up with lung cancer. Again, life is just not that simple.
So what’s the point?
My point is that there is no such thing as luck. But we are also not sovereign over our lives or this world. It is somewhere in between, but rarely is it either extreme of “we have no control” (i.e. lucky) to “we have all of the control” (i.e. masters of our own destinies).
We can try to control the outcomes of our choices to the best of our ability. But ultimately, God is the one Who is sovereign. Does that mean we just throw our hands up in frustration and live fatalistic lives, walking on proverbial egg shells our entire lives so as to avoid losing our “luck”? Absolutely not.
Talents
There’s a story in the bible that illustrates this concept really well. In the story of the talents (Matt 25:14 – 30), each person was given different amounts of money to steward, each according to their ability. They were all expected to do the best they could with what they’d been given. So is it lucky that the man with five talents got more than the man with one talent? Well again, yes sort of, not exactly. They were both expected to steward what they were given to the best of their ability. Two of the men did, and one didn’t. Then the one with the most money ended up getting everything from the one who had the least. Again, is it luck? Is it choices? Or is it somewhere in between?
I say all of this to emphasize the fact that as parents, we do not have ultimate authority over the relationship with Christ that our children have. It is purely by His grace that any of us are saved (Eph 2:8-9). But we also know that the Proverbs teach us, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it,” (Prov. 22:6). Just to be clear, this is not a promise but more of an instruction.
To reiterate, we can not guarantee whether or not our children will accept the LORD. But I know that we greatly increase the chances of them not walking away from Christ when we train them up according to God’s Word.
What should we do?
The best way to train our children up in the LORD is by feeding their minds with Scripture. We must teach our children foundational truths to ground them in the faith. As I’ve said in other posts, if we don’t, there are plenty of others out in the world that will do it for us. And they’re ready, willing, and anxious to do it.
Again, this is no guarantee our children won’t walk away. Just like our family being healthy and fit didn’t guarantee we wouldn’t have issues with our bout with this modern day “plague.” But it sure helps up the chances. Why wouldn’t we do what we could to ground our kids in Truth?
The LORD is sovereign
There is so much freedom in knowing that the LORD is sovereign. But I also know that we’re expected to do all that we can with what we’ve been given. That tension was intentionally placed there by God.
So I encourage us all to start with teaching our children God’s Word! Teach them directly from the source! And to add to that teaching, give them resources of truth and beauty from good books that have a biblical worldview. We have lots here at MHM! Check them out, and continue to work out your salvation (Phil 2:12 – 13) to the glory of God.
