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Plants Grown Up

January 31, 2005

This morning my 12 year old son did not want to go to school. He had spent the weekend on a school sponsored ski trip and was exhausted. He'd come home and was in bed by 8:30 pm and had a good 9 hours of sleep. Matt informed me that LOTS of kids were staying home and sleeping in.
Later - I found this was true. Many students didn't show for school.
I think there are two ways of looking at childhood. One is that childhood is a protected time with special privileges and few responsibilities. This is characterized by "your only a child once", "let children be children", "soon they'll be adults, and they won't have this chance", etc...
The other way is your child is a young plant, a seedling. He must be cared, nourished and provided for. He also must be pruned occasionally and shielded when the sun gets too hot. But basically he is a plant waiting to grow up. It is a continuum.
Biblically, I feel parenting should draw from the later philosophy. Our responsibility as parents is raise young men and women of God. There is no magic switch to adulthood that happens when you cannot sleep in, you must be responsible, you must deny yourself for a greater good. These lessons are learned slowly from birth on - just as a seedling is nourished to maturity.
In Psalm 1 David speaks about the blessed man who is "a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers."
Right now I have to put my young plant to bed so he does not wither tomorrow - that whatever he does he prospers - because he is growing up to be a Blessed Man.