Following God’s perfect family plan
“Daddy, come crunch ice with us!”
As I write this, our lawn is covered in an early morning frost. Making things more fun, as far as my girls were concerned, is that the lawn is still blanketed by a lovely layer of huge poplar leaves. The large, crunchy leaves, adorned by exquisite frost, proved too much of a temptation for my little ladies to ignore.
And so it was that one father, two girls and six feet crunched around the yard for a few moments for no particularly productive reason. We could see our breath and, since we were all intentionally silent, we could hear nothing but crunching.
My wife and son came out a few moments later, and we all loaded up into the vehicle and went about our day. But whatever I did that day, I could, from time to time, still hear the lovely sound of crunching leaves under our feet.
There is something so incredibly precious about family time, mostly because there is something so precious about family.
I want to say what I say carefully because it is my goal to encourage and help, not discourage or hurt. There is such a thing as a masterpiece in this world, and it is the family the way God designed it.
I grew up in a single-parent home. My mother was and is a godly Christian lady, and she did a phenomenal job as a parent, much better of a job than I did as a child, I think. But having experienced home both the way God designed it and another way, I am convinced that, as always, God’s ways are perfect.
I was raised without a father, my children are being raised with one. Our home consists of father, mother and children. That is the design God laid out in the very first family — Adam, Eve and children. In our fallen world, things often happen to break that mold, as it did in the family of my youth. But anyone suggesting that there is anything equal to or superior to God’s design is doing people a disservice.
When my girls are have “girl issues,” they have a mother to talk to, a mother who has already experienced all that and knows just what to say. When my son is trying to figure out all the changes of life, he has a father to talk to, one who has already been through it and knows what to say.
Should my girls ever feel threatened by someone, they have a father capable of power and anger to shield them. Should my son need help understanding a girl, he does not have to turn to a man that, after 45 years, still cannot figure out all the mysteries of the lovely and intriguing creature called woman; he can turn to my wife and get crystal-clear guidance.
Please understand that, though I have a very strong biblical opinion on right and wrong on the subject of what people call family, I am not even dealing with “right” or “wrong” in this particular column; I am dealing with “ideal.” Both the Bible and thousands of years of human history truly have yielded an ideal for us, a model that is most beneficial, especially for the creation and the raising of children.
It truly is an ideal worth striving for and celebrating.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books that are available at wordofhismouth.com. Contact him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.