Please Excuse Our Progress

He learned to mow the lawn but didn’t empty the bag of clippings.

Her bedroom looks clean . . . unless you look under the bed.

He got all As, except for that one C minus.

Oh, imperfection. How we want our kids to master tasks and be perfect. While they keep getting more things right, there’s always something they missed or just didn’t get.

It’s hard to be patient and keep the right perspective on the maturing process our children and we must go through. If we lose patience, we can either ramp up our children’s anxieties and lack of confidence or cause them to give up and proclaim, “Nothing is ever good enough for you!”

We strive to find the balance between celebrating achievements and encouraging continued progress. We want them to be motivated to get better. We want them to feel good about their current stage. Somehow, we live in that tension and need to help our children navigate it, too. In all aspects of our lives, we need to acknowledge our imperfections while moving toward becoming what we should be—more like Jesus Christ.

I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep on running and struggling to take hold of the prize.

Philippians 3:12 (CEV)

We can find help keeping this balance by observing how Scripture encourages us in our spiritual growth. In our verse today, Paul’s explanation of where he is at is both realistic and hopeful.

As author Martin Schleske points out in his book The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty, God places us here in the “preliminary” to do our imperfect work to the best of our ability. He writes:

Jesus says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Herein lies a secret key to being both complete and preliminary. The grain of wheat is preliminary; after all, it is not even a sprout, let alone a full-grown ear of wheat. But this preliminary state does not take away the importance of the seed or the meaning it carries. What a person does here and now is no less important and no less real than life in the future world. As preliminary as our work may be, like a grain of wheat, it contains everything inside. And it comes to life through commitment, devotion.

God alone brings things to perfection, to completion. Too much focus on perfection for humans kills hope, stokes fears, and even fosters arrogance and independence apart from God.

So, work resting where God has you and your child. Celebrate the accomplishments and the milestones of the journey. Keep looking for what God has for you to work toward. And trust him in the process of getting there.

PRAY

Lord, please keep working in my kids and me. Please help us be both patient and persistent in this process of growth. Amen.

TIME TO TALK

Conversation starter for kids: Provides you with questions and prompts to facilitate a time of applicable discussion with children to lead them towards knowing God and His Word more deeply.

Question(s): What are the most perfect things you can think of? How did that thing get to be so perfect?

Apply: Bring up the idea of perfectionism in humans. Ask your kids if they feel pressure to be perfect. Apologize to them if you may have made them feel this pressure. Explain that no one is perfect apart from Christ; he alone will help us be more like him.

KEEP IT GOING

Related passages: These additional verses will help parents expand Scriptural knowledge and place on the armor of God’s Word to tackle each day. Swipe to read the passages today.

1 Corinthians 13:11

Hebrews 12:2