Entrusting Our Children Daily

As parents we are controlling, right?  We have feelings and opinions about how our children should deal with situations, how they should react to their friends, how they should respond to adults, the list goes on and on and gets very detailed.  My daughter has this unruly, wonderfully curly hair and I know that if she used a certain brush and the hair product that I keep purchasing for her she would have these long curly tresses that would be the envy of all women everywhere.  Well, at least the ones like myself with straight hair.  I am constantly peaking into her bathroom as she gets ready and saying, did you put product on your hair, what are you trying to do, can I help?  Control of my children's lives, appearances, actions, habits is something that I deal with daily.

God wants us to release that control and to entrust our children to him daily.  Ugh...that is going to be hard, right?  However, if we entrust them we have truly placed them in the hands of someone who has their best interest at heart and knows exactly the path by which they will glorify him.  Do we believe in our God's ability?  If we do, then the entrusting of our children should be easy.  But it's not.

"...because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day." 2 Timothy 1:12

I want to trust him with them and I try daily to do so. One of the most amazing mothers I have encountered in the bible is Hannah.  In 1 Samuel 1 and 2 is the story of a woman who had been unable to get pregnant.  She desired a child, a son actually, with all of her heart.  She went directly to her God and prayed for a child.
And she made a vow saying, "O Lord Almighty, if you will look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life..."  I Samuel 1:11
She does become pregnant and she does more than entrust her child to the Lord.  Once he is weaned she actually gives him to the priest in the temple, Eli, and he is raised by Eli.  She visits him yearly and brings him a robe each year. (1 Samuel 2:19)  Can you imagine having a child, feeding him, then weaning him and actually giving him up to the Lord not only intangibly but tangibly?  I cannot, but I have great reverence for Hannah and the act of giving her child physically to God.  Hannah's son was Samuel who grew to be a man of God.
"...the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord." I Samuel 2:21b

While God has not called me to give my children to him physically, he has called me to parenting which involves trusting him and entrusting my children to his plan and abilities.  Because of what Hannah did and the knowledge I have of my God, I will make an effort every day, even in my humanness, to entrust my children to the one whom I believe and know that all things work together for his good.  Will it be easy?  No!  But...he has provided the best and most important parenting book. He has provided the parenting blueprint that is better than any other blueprint out there, the bible.  More on that next week!

By His Grace