Theme:   Help I'm a Parent - The Parenting Endgame

This eDevotional was written by a volunteer from Timberlake Church. 

READ: Luke 10: 38-42

THINK: Like many of us this week the snow brought a power outage to my house. I have to confess in many ways this brings a relief to me. Obviously the lack of heat and light are not ideal but it seems to give me more time. Somehow washing my pots by hand, not being able to do laundry, vacuum, read a book or watch TV makes the time pass slower than rushing around trying to do six things at once.

The day the power went out, my family spent the day playing board games, reading the Bible and talking to each other. There was no competition with a computer, Xbox, telephone or TV--- we just had time for each other. For me it was such a blessing to have lots of free time with my kids. When the power came back on I thanked them for a fun day ‘in the dark’ and it turned out they had enjoyed it too.

This weekend Pastor Ben talked about our goals for our kids and one was time in scripture and time in church. This week I realized that my priorities have been askew and I’ve focused more on getting things done than doing the right things. The power outage showed me that building relationships with my kids and showing them a good example is so much more important than keeping up with a TV series or video games. I knew this already of course but it was a short term goal of relaxing which led my life and not investing in my long term goal of my kids.

Our reading today is one that may seem familiar to some, but once again it shows us we need to focus on long term goals in the short term. Do we need to run around and be busy or can we see that to achieve our long term goals of growing our children in God’s way we should also make them a short term goal?

DO: Think about how you are investing your daily time. Are you meeting your long term goals by investing time in them in the short term? What changes can you make day to day that will help you meet your long term goals for you and your children?

PRAY:   Lord, thank you that you made plenty of time for us to do all the things we have to. Please help us see the things we do that are not helping us be where you want us to be or that don’t help grow our families. We ask for your grace to help us take out of our daily lives the things that are not necessary and to focus more on you and your plan for us. Amen.