Trusting God's Will For Your Child

This from Thriving Family.com   jk

by Dr. Juli Slattery

Imagine that someone handed you a blank journal and a pen. Your assignment: Write the script for your child's life.

What if you were told that everything you wrote in the journal would come to fulfillment? You could choose the perfect career, lifestyle and spouse for your child. You could even determine exactly when and how your child's life would end.

What would you write?

I know this may sound a little strange, but thanks to Mary, the mother of Jesus, I ask myself 

this question every Christmas. I can't help but imagine her rocking baby Jesus and pondering what His life would hold. Knowing He was the Son of God, Mary must have envisioned a royal and glorious life for her child. I wonder if she lay in bed thinking of how He would someday be honored as King.

But as the years passed and the events of Jesus' life unfolded, perhaps Mary's heart cried out, "This can't be! He's the Son of God! Where is the honor my son is due?" As she stood at the foot of the Cross, gazing at His beaten face and broken body, what 

would she have given to save her son from this pain and humiliation? Surely, such suffering had never been part of what she would have scripted for His life. How desperately she must have longed to rescue Him from that cross.

Imagine what would have happened if Mary were somehow able to stop the Crucifixion. The deep love of a mother might have thwarted the very purpose of her son's time on Earth.

Mary's story challenges me to ask myself, What crosses do I keep my children from bearing? Out of the depths of my love, what aspects of God's plan do I fight to protect my sons from? What pain, difficult choices and persecution do I train them to avoid?

I am so thankful that nothing, not even a mother's love, could keep my Lord Jesus from the Cross. Am I equally willing to pray that nothing, not even a mother's love, would keep my children from God's work in their lives? I must humbly acknowledge that whatever script I could write for their lives would fall far short of God's plans for them.

This Christmas season let Mary's story challenge each of us to trust God more fully. Let our prayer be "Lord, have Your way with our children."