Friday, January 20, 2012

Sanctification Multiplication

"But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen."
~2 Peter 3:18

As any mother of small children can testify: children never become perfect. We don't just suddenly wake up one day with perfect, well-mannered, sinless children. Instead, they simply progress from one area of imperfection to another. While our children may no longer be biting one another, they move into the stage of talking back. When they get past that stage, they start doing something else. They, like us, will never be perfect. 

I had an amazing book recommended to me a few weeks ago by a friend. It's called "Loving the Little Years" by Rachel Jankovic, and while I was originally put off by how amazingly short it is, it holds some very powerful truths. This being one of them. Rachel relates our children's progression in growing up and moving from one sinful deed to another, to basic math. I just love the picture that paints. You can never know everything there is to know about mathematics. While when we are little we learn how to count and that 1+1=2, in our spiritual walk we have to first learn who Jesus is and what He has done before we can move into the spiritual trigonometry of living out our Christian walk. 

I guess that my favorite take away from all of this is that we have to teach our children to count today so that they will be able to face the later courses of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry with a leg to stand on. That doesn't mean that they won't struggle or fail (because we all do some of the time), it just means that they will have a foundation. A starting place, and a place to come back to when needed. 

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