Growing Up
Several times a year our friend Mike Poore of The Humanitas Forum on Christianity and Culture brings speakers to nearby Cookeville, Tennessee, to deliver lectures related to how Christians can impact modern culture. Last Friday night Mike hosted Dr. Chris Kiesling of Asbury Theological Seminary for a lecture entitled “Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Church: Sources and Solutions.”
On Friday afternoon, I went into our emerging laundry room to see if Mike and Jenny would like to go. Their expressions were priceless. They were so eager they looked like children who had just been offered an ice cream cone! Obviously they are still homeschooling parents at heart, even though their children all graduated many years ago.
I went to sit and listen, but was met with a challenge right off the bat. A volunteer handed us 3 x 5 cards so that we could write down answers to the four questions on the screens at the front of the lecture hall. The first question was this: when did I become (or when would I become) an adult?
I struggled with the answer. I wished I could honestly say that I had become an adult when I began to take on adult responsibilities. I wished I could say I had been an adult since my early twenties when I got married. However, the answer I came up with was this: “I became an adult when I became a parent.”
When Dr. Kiesling began the lecture, he offered several possible answers. I was relieved when one of those possible answers matched my own.
There is something scary about becoming an adult. I love to have fun and act like a kid–just ask my kids and my grandkids! But there is a time for everything. When kids and adults live in a family, everyone has to know who is who. Mature adults aren’t wanting to lord it over somebody; they’re wanting to make children feel safe and loved. Every child who feels safe and loved has parents who are sure who the grown-ups are.
We grown-ups can rest in the security of our heavenly Father who makes us feel safe and loved. Aren’t we glad that God is secure in His role as the grown-up!
Brethren, do not be children in your thinking;
yet in evil be infants,
but in your thinking be mature.
1 Corinthians 14:20