(The following sermon was delivered at our grandson Jeffery’s dedication service.)
An honest study of the Scriptures will not provide a lot of specific guidance regarding the rearing of children. And to be honest, some of that guidance is not helpful: “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” “If your child sasses you/disrespects you, stone him to death.” Where was child protection services back then?
However, there are some basic teachings about life and how we are to treat one another which are helpful, especially when we interpret and apply these teachings in light of God’s greatest revelation in Jesus. Today I want to look at a poem regarding children which I believe has profound implications for how we relate to children, both our own and those around us.
The poem comes from the classic work entitled The Prophet by a Lebanese Christian named Kahlil Gibran. Gibran lived from 1883 to 1931. In addition to being a poet, he was also a philosopher and artist. His poems have been translated into more than twenty languages. The last twenty years of his life were spent in the United States where he began to write in English. He was profoundly influenced by the Christian faith and the Bible. His insights come from a deep well of wisdom which is both universal and personal.
The Prophet is a book of poems about a sage who has lived in another country for twelve years. And in that country he has spoken truth to all who would hear. The time has come for him to return to his homeland. As he approaches the ship which will take him home, he is surrounded by people who beg him not to leave them. But the prophet aches to go home to his own people and his own land. And the people, realizing that he will leave them, one by one begin to ask him questions, desperately wanting some last words from this teacher before he departs. “And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, ‘Speak to us of Children.’”
Here was the prophet’s response:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Like Jesus, the prophet often shocks us with the very first words that come out of his mouth: “Your children are not your children!” Gibran understands one of the most important truths about life according to the Scriptures. Life is a gift, not a possession. Every life is a gift, including the lives of our children. In a very real sense, every child is named “Nathaniel” which means “Gift of God.” Our children are gifts from God which we are meant to treasure and hold precious, but they are not our possessions. That gift of life is not just for us—it’s not even primarily for us. That gift of life is God’s gift to the child, and it is a gift we can never possess. That life belongs to the child, not to us, and as such, the child comes through us but not from us. Our children spend almost two whole decades with us, but they do not belong to us. They belong to themselves and to the God who made them. They are unique expressions of the image of God—expressions we are to nurture, love, and cherish, but their lives belong more to them than to us. And ultimately all lives belong to God, because life in all its manifestations is a gift and never a possession we can hoard, manipulate, or control.
But the prophet continues:
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
When our daughter Miriam was born and I would hold her in my arms and dream about her future, I remember thinking that these words from Gibran were totally ridiculous—a bunch of sentimental, hippy garbage. But then I realized that Gibran died long before there were any hippies or a New Age movement. So I looked more deeply into what he was saying and discovered a profound wisdom. When he says that we should strive to be like them but not seek to make them like us, I thought, “Wait a minute! Isn’t that what parenting is all about? To make children like we are so they will not be like much of the world in all its violence, greed, selfishness, arrogance, and shallowness?” But then I recalled something another prophet said: “Except you become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of God.” So I decided to give some deeper thought to Gibran’s words.
Each child is unique. From a genetic standpoint, it has taken millions of years for each one of us be as we are. Countless people in our genetic backgrounds have contributed to who we are in all our uniqueness. And then our environment plays its part. How different would you be if you had been born in a rural village in India or a tribe in South America with all of their traditions and customs? And then there is your own unique way of taking all the world into your heart, mind, and soul and making sense of it and deciding what all this means for your life. We are all not only gifts from God–we are also unique gifts. Our children will have their own thoughts. We can house their bodies, but we cannot contain their souls/their true Selves. Why? Because their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow—their tomorrow, not ours. Our tomorrow is not their tomorrow, and their tomorrow is not our tomorrow.
Most of us have our children for about 18 years of their lives. At times that may seem like an eternity (especially during the teen years!). But most of us become painfully aware that those years go by so quickly. Like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” as he sings “Sunrise, Sunset,” before we know it the little boy who played cowboys and Indians or the little girl who played with dolls and had tea parties suddenly stands before us grown and ready to make their mark on the world. They have flown the nest and entered into the house of their tomorrow which we cannot even visit.
So does this mean that we are to teach our children nothing? Does this mean we should not strive to provide a good influence for them? These are legitimate questions. The world will seek to mold our children. That’s what advertising is all about. Just think how much television influences our children not to mention all those people and peers our children will meet along the way. Gibran knew that, and certainly Jesus knew that. So how do we deal with this question of being responsible parents but at the same time not seeking to make our children like us?
We find our answer in the next lines of Gibran’s poem:
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
We know that for the first 6 years of children’s lives their brains are predominantly in what are called Delta (ages 0-2) and Theta (ages 2-6) brain waves. This state is similar to what happens during hypnosis. And because they are in these Delta and Theta brain waves, they are super-learners. They download everything they see, hear, and experience into their subconscious. From an evolutionary standpoint, this was necessary during the early history of the human race when children had to learn fast if they were to survive in a hostile world. As a result of all this, children are keen observers, but often they are poor interpreters. (This is why 90% of the time children assume that if something goes wrong it’s their fault.) So how we act around them and how we relate to them and everyone else has a profound though often subconscious impact on their development.
All of which means that we teach primarily by our example. The greatest gift we can give our children is unconditional love. We cannot give them our thoughts or make them into replicas of ourselves. “Life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.” Do we really want to be replicas of our parents? Do we really want our children to be replicas of us? With all our mistakes, weaknesses, faults, prejudices? But by our example we can show them ways of living which they can build upon in the future. We can live lives of integrity, love, courage, forgiveness, compassion, and joy which can point them on their way into their future. We can give them some building stones through our example which they can use in building the house of their tomorrow. And doing so, we become the bows from which the Archer sends forth living arrows into their time and place because “the Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite”—the mark that belongs to our child, not to us. But the Archer uses us as the bow/the foundation/the launching pad for our children to enter their unique realm of life. The question is, “What kind of bow will we be for God to use in sending forth our children into their tomorrow?”
But how does this relate to our Christian faith? Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice.” Every mark the Archer seeks is aimed at some manifestation of that Kingdom—that time and place when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. If by our example we are seeking first God’s Kingdom and its justice, then we will provide our children with the much needed bow for their wholeness and joy and the world’s healing and redemption. And this is where I fear we as parents have failed. If our own lives are not centered on God’s Kingdom/God’s will/God’s way/God’s love all of which we see supremely in God’s Son Jesus, then we have squandered not only our lives and unique opportunities, but we have also endangered those of our children. We are not responsible for how our children decide to live their lives and live out of God’s Kingdom. But we are responsible for how we decide to live our lives and live out of God’s Kingdom, because it’s through that decision and that life that we provide the bow from which the Archer can send forth our children as living arrows toward their Kingdom’s goal.
When we look at our children this way, there may be some sorrow and melancholy. When the baby bird leaves the nest to go its own way, the parent birds feel a twinge of regret. But as Gibran says, “Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness, for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.” All that I had of Miriam when she was a baby, toddler, child, teenager—all that is still mine. It will forever be a part of who I am. With the Living God, nothing is lost—all is kept and will serve as building blocks not only in my daughter’s future but in the New Heaven and the New Earth. And now that my daughter has her own two sons, she and Doug become the bow and Grant and Jeffery become the arrows. And God’s Kingdom continues in new times and new places, for the Archer always sees the mark upon the path of the infinite. And if we so decide to live in the Spirit of Jesus, we can play our part in the building of that Kingdom which has no end and which embraces bow and arrow, parent and child, and every other part of this exquisite creation—for we are all kept in the heart of God.
