Shaping Influences
Our friends left today after a week long stay with us. It was a week full of good food, stories, laughter, and fun. Our spirits were lifted, our moods were lightened, and our hearts were encouraged by the time shared. Not many people can live in your house for a week and in leaving make you wish they had stayed a little longer. That’s the mark of good friends.
They told us we encouraged them, and thanked us for our investment into their lives. But in reality their lives are as much a gift to us as ours will ever be to them. And we are acutely aware that we are only able to invest in them because we have been invested into by another couple equally precious to us that have spent years of their lives pouring God’s grace into ours. We can bless others because we were blessed.
Life works like that, all of our lives touching each other, brushing up against each other, bumping into one another. All of those interactions shape us in little or big ways depending upon the depth impact of the interaction. Some of them shape us for good. Some of them shape us to our harm. But every interaction impacts us in some way.
We have of late been teaching a parenting class. As such we have been reading and studying and thinking through our God given responsibility as parents to shape our children to their good and to God’s glory. It’s a challenging calling, requiring time and careful attention. This week I have been given a window into lives where the shaping didn’t go well, where the impact of the life touching life left a painful imprint and scars that will be difficult to heal.
It has left me deeply grateful for the shaping influence our parents had on our lives, which although imperfect, was done with great love and grace. The impression it left behind pointed us directly to the love of our Savior and drove us there to seek after that same beauty. In their shaping they taught us how to love our own children and pointed us to the fountain of grace that would enable us to do it as they did (not perfectly but in His strength). Again we can bless because we were blessed.
This week has brought with it a range of situations and emotions. I have laughed with silly friends, cried with weeping ones, tenderly held my feverish daughter, planned for the future, reflected on the past, taught His wise words to others, and received teaching from His word into my own heart. In all of that living, I have brushed up against countless lives and have either left a beautiful impression of His grace or a messy impression of my own selfish making. I am becoming more acutely aware the more time passes of what a responsibility and privilege I have to touch each life that passes by mine with the grace that was offered so generously into my own life. In a world full of hurting people, I have the opportunity to impart the grace (love, joy, peace, hope, forgiveness, compassion) that is so desperately missing mostly everywhere I look. Nowhere is this responsibility more pressing then into my own children’s lives, but it is also needed in every other relationship I have been gifted with. As I reflect back on what attracted me to Him, I can see that so often what He used was the beautiful grace that I witnessed in the lives of those who took the time to shape my life or simply brush up against it in simple but memorable ways. I am encouraged and challenged to be careful of my ways, my speech, my countenance, my attitudes, and my thoughts that I might bring glory to the one who saved me by imparting grace to the ones He loves.
They told us we encouraged them, and thanked us for our investment into their lives. But in reality their lives are as much a gift to us as ours will ever be to them. And we are acutely aware that we are only able to invest in them because we have been invested into by another couple equally precious to us that have spent years of their lives pouring God’s grace into ours. We can bless others because we were blessed.
Life works like that, all of our lives touching each other, brushing up against each other, bumping into one another. All of those interactions shape us in little or big ways depending upon the depth impact of the interaction. Some of them shape us for good. Some of them shape us to our harm. But every interaction impacts us in some way.
We have of late been teaching a parenting class. As such we have been reading and studying and thinking through our God given responsibility as parents to shape our children to their good and to God’s glory. It’s a challenging calling, requiring time and careful attention. This week I have been given a window into lives where the shaping didn’t go well, where the impact of the life touching life left a painful imprint and scars that will be difficult to heal.
It has left me deeply grateful for the shaping influence our parents had on our lives, which although imperfect, was done with great love and grace. The impression it left behind pointed us directly to the love of our Savior and drove us there to seek after that same beauty. In their shaping they taught us how to love our own children and pointed us to the fountain of grace that would enable us to do it as they did (not perfectly but in His strength). Again we can bless because we were blessed.
This week has brought with it a range of situations and emotions. I have laughed with silly friends, cried with weeping ones, tenderly held my feverish daughter, planned for the future, reflected on the past, taught His wise words to others, and received teaching from His word into my own heart. In all of that living, I have brushed up against countless lives and have either left a beautiful impression of His grace or a messy impression of my own selfish making. I am becoming more acutely aware the more time passes of what a responsibility and privilege I have to touch each life that passes by mine with the grace that was offered so generously into my own life. In a world full of hurting people, I have the opportunity to impart the grace (love, joy, peace, hope, forgiveness, compassion) that is so desperately missing mostly everywhere I look. Nowhere is this responsibility more pressing then into my own children’s lives, but it is also needed in every other relationship I have been gifted with. As I reflect back on what attracted me to Him, I can see that so often what He used was the beautiful grace that I witnessed in the lives of those who took the time to shape my life or simply brush up against it in simple but memorable ways. I am encouraged and challenged to be careful of my ways, my speech, my countenance, my attitudes, and my thoughts that I might bring glory to the one who saved me by imparting grace to the ones He loves.
i miss you, gretchen. that is all.
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