From a great homescool blog with a really cool name, Higher Up and Further In, comes this great reflection on Christian parenting. An excerpt:
So how do we impart the Spiritual? We cannot impart what we do not have. So we must begin with ourselves. If we cannot answer the following questions in the affirmative, then we must seek such revelation with all our heart. Do we believe Him when He states over and over again that He loves us with an everlasting love? Or is it mental assent? If we truly believe that we have a Perfect Lover who will never leave us and hurt us without a cause, then we will respond in kind. We will long to get to know Him deeply, to be near Him, to share every secret with Him and ask for his counsel. We will spend our days and nights thinking of Him. We will yearn to see His face. Our life will revolve around pleasing Him, because we have learned that He is the perfect, benevolent King. Our heart will skip a beat when He speaks our name. (And He DOES speak YOUR name.) We will no longer fear for our loved ones if we are taken before them, knowing that we did our best and now their Perfect Father, Who loves them so much more than we ever could, will finish the task. It�s not that we don�t love our children enough; it�s just that we love Him more. We begin to find that earth�s pleasures leave us unsatisfied and they begin to fade, while heaven�s light seems to glow behind a thinner shroud.
If we love Him this much, then we will not be able to stop ourselves from speaking of Him with great feeling to our children throughout the day. We will often recall the good gifts He has blessed us with, we will speak of the wonders He has wrought in creation and His many miracles through the ages. When we fail, we will thank Him for His mercy and forgiveness and then do the same for our little ones. We will continually compare Him with the kings of the earth and brag of His surpassing greatness. Our children will see us spontaneously worship with a full heart. We will often speak of heaven with yearning in our eyes, not because of that beautiful mansion we want, but because the King lives there and we will finally see His face and be near Him.
And then, one day�we catch a glimpse of Love�s mist in our own dear children�s eyes.
