We Stood Upon StarsSýnishorn

Children

It’s hard for me to teach my boys the things I have not mastered. We tend to teach below our level of understanding so we can be confident in the teaching.

What my boys want is to know how to be a man and what the world will be like once they become one. They want to know what they are capable of, how far they can push things. Though they don’t know how to say it, they want to know how to abandon the fear that keeps them from trying to achieve something great. They want to know how to believe they can become someone great.

Proverbs 22:6 gives us our instructions as parents, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”

In my life, I’ve found I often need help with this. There are some things I know, and can teach, but much more that I cannot. In the absence of my answers I’m trying to teach my boys how to seek God with their own questions. To do this I take them to oceans and mountains, wild places, where God’s voice is still heard through the wind in the trees.

This recently led us to Glacier National Park where like the psalmist, I looked to the mountains and asked where my help would come from. From lakeshores, peaks tower in every direction, the highest summits distinguished by glaciers that from a distance look like long white beards. They appear as a gathering of wise men who know of this age and the ages before. For they were there when God first spoke to creation and separated heaven from earth. And they carry with them a memory of heaven, made available for anyone willing to stand at the water’s edge and look up.

I now stand with my boys in the water, hoping that memories of mountains will do the thing I am not wise enough, nor strong enough, to do. To shape them into men.

How would you define success as a father and if you are a father, would you say that you are being successful?

If not, what would improve your success?

If you’re not yet a father, what could you be doing now to prepare for success?