The Corona Blessing: The Almighty Brings Parents to Maturity

4 Aug., 2020

For some, the virus has served to compel improvements in parenting.  Careers cans serve as an escape from the duty to “parent,” to “rear,” – indeed to “disciple” one’s children.  Parenting is a labor that some, to their discredit, are happy to circumvent or attenuate.  Careers sometimes provide a relief from that laborious task. 

But it is a duty, nevertheless,  ordained by God and one which serves not onlythe children who are being trained, but the trainers, who, as sinners, arethemselves ever undergoing their own personal sanctification.  “Iron sharpens iron” as the sayinggoes.  And some iron from one’s own loinsis about as warm and friendly as it gets – or should be.

Many-a parent, I do believe, finds a way to circumvent thisexperience in pursuit of career and money (played off as a necessity fornecessary income).  But no income,really, is worth the discipline and the instruction given by a parent who is“sharing time” with his child.

Truly, it is an opportunity to share time together, tointer-act with one another, to have fellowship even in the midst of a didacticsetting.  Yes, the parent is to instructin and model right living,  But he alsoexperiences growth in his own spiritual maturation.  From the time a mother learns the pain of carryinga child inside her body and  expellinghim into the world until the time he goes off to marriage or travel or careerthat mother has her life in the endless company of her offspring.

But she learns, indeed, that it is not all about her.  Life is about giving the same to others:producing others and serving them.   This path is the way of God, who made us, refused to destroy us when webetrayed him, became one of us, died for all the human race, and continues toprovide for His rebels throughout the world.

And those rebels continue to wander in their rebellion fromgeneration to generation and nation to nation.

But the virus is one of those tools the Almighty’s uses justas He has in past times: plagues and wars and droughts and storms and faminesof the past.  He says, “Wakeup!  Give me the honor and the worshipthat is due.  Death awaits all and thenjudgment.  Wake up, do your duty.  Repent and be at peace.”

So gain some benefits from the Corona Virus spanking.  Grow up and live with the knowledge that theultimate goal in life is to bring gloryto Him, especially through that Community of Saints, the Church: evangelismand service.  In all that you do, avoidsin, serve the brethren, and serve others outside the Community of Saints withthe high goal of bringing honor to Him and some into the fold.