“We’re sending scores of well-educated, well-dressed, well-adjusted, well-connected children to hell.” I can’t remember where I read that (it was probably 25 years ago or more), but it has stuck with me. What is at stake in raising our children is more than giving them the best life we can give them on earth. What is at stake is where they (and ultimately their children and all who come after them) will spend eternity.
Do you get a little sick and tired of everything you have to do as a parent? Parenting can seem like a chore because of the chores that come with it- getting up with crying babies, chasing after toddlers, making meals, doing laundry, helping with homework, nursing sick kids, carting kids around. Parenting can seem like a bore because the chores are tedious and keep repeating day after day. But God elevates parenting to a high privilege by making parents his representatives to do his work for their (really HIS) children. When, by faith, we grasp that, we are able to keep doing the mundane, repetitious chores of parenting with a renewed spirit of eagerness and joy.
Is there a big difference between “was” and “am”? There is when it comes to baptism. We do not say, “I was baptized,” as though baptism was merely an act in the past. We say, “I am baptized,” because the blessings of our baptism continue each day.