TheologyThoughts

Far too quickly, my daughters are getting older now. My 14 year old is talking about her driver's license and college major. My 12 year old is not far behind. My parents and the older people I knew when I was a child were absolutely right – time starts flying much too fast when you get older! I was looking at some of the toys and other gifts that we have gotten the girls over the brief time that God has entrusted us with them, items in our basement no longer used or perhaps even remembered (unless they do one of their occasional "excavations"). The thought occurred to me:

We didn't get these gifts because we had to, or to make the girls love us, or for any other reason except the fact that we loved them and wanted them to be happy at the time. We weren't trying to make them feel good about us when they were teenagers, or trying to get them to obey us better because they like us somehow – we got them those gifts only because we love them and want them to be happy.

Now, there's a lot more that goes into parenting, discipline, and sometimes making decisions that don't make the child immediately happy – we want our children to grow up good, not just happy, but as I reflected on this, I realized that I suddenly understood, on a much deeper level, God's love for us and why he gives us his gifts of grace, starting with Jesus himself (Eph 1:3-14). It's simply because he loves us, not to get anything out of us, not because we love him, but because he loves us...