In the last article on time I considered why we are to be wise stewards of the time that God has given us and our children. You can read that article at redeemerchurchbrunswick.wordpress.com. This week I would like to offer some practical suggestions as to the wise use of your summer that is saturated in time. While this article is particularly geared to parents with children at home it should be helpful to anyone who is thinking about being a wise steward of the time given them by God.
READ to Discover Truth, Goodness and Beauty
Parents should be teaching their children to be life long learners. Therefore teach them to enjoy learning through reading. Read to your children and give them time to read each day. When you are with them ask them to tell you about what they are reading. If they are older teach them to reflect on what they are reading through writing. There are many resources that are helpful for parents to know what to read to their children and what their children should be reading. I would suggest the following resources to get you started The Book Tree and The 1000 Good Books List. And if you are not sure about how to encourage your older children to write in reflection upon what they are reading you may want to read The Well Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. You are never to old to become a life long learner. Take up and read.
LABOR to Develop Skills and Discover Interests
Parents should be looking to their children’s adult life. Therefore the time is given you to teach them that God has made them to work for his glory. The work ethic that will enable them to provide for their families, contribute to the needs of the saints and subdue the earth for God’s glory can be discovered during childhood and the young adult years. They will learn different skills as you give them different jobs and in the development of skills they will find what God has given them abilities for and interests in. Seek to give them regular duties they must perform each day and week. But you should also give them opportunities to perform special tasks or jobs that will help them explore the God’s gift of cultivating the earth. Those labors may even require them to do jobs for people outside of their own house at church, for a neighbor or in the community.
PLAY to Enjoy the Pleasures of God and the People God has Made
In redemption Christ is making all things new and the recreation we participate in and hold out for our children should reflect this. God has given your children a world to discover and enjoy his pleasures in creation and the preservation of that creation. Parents should be putting their children in situations where they play in the enjoyment of what God has made and sustains. It does not have to be organized at a park but can be within the confines of the linen closet that turns into a secret headquarters, cave or a house of their own. Parents should seek to put their children in situations where they play by themselves and with others. And the others should not always be the people they get along best with or the people the parents can tolerate the most. Play may involve organized sports, playing in a creek, on some rocks at the beach or out in the backyard with the “same old stuff”. However, the word nor any form of the word “bored” should allowed to be spoken by the child who is given the privilege of playing in God’s creation.
SERVE to Learn to Love Neighbors
Life is ministry and ministry takes a life. God has redeemed his church to serve his creatures not to be served by his creatures. Therefore, parents have a particular responsibility to set an example before their children as servants to those inside and outside of the church. Parents should be seeking opportunities to take their children with them as they serve others. Serving and loving our neighbors does not require and invitation or a special program set up by the church or the government. You do not have to look far beyond your family, your church family or your neighbors to find an opportunity to steward the time God has given by doing the works of him so that others will see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
DISCOVER to See Beyond Their Present Reality
Places of discovery are the windows into the breadth of the world that God creates and sustains. There are places in the backyard or in the community that can be places of discovery. You do not have to spend great amounts of money to participate in discovery. Your children can learn a lot from the complexity of the places where you live. But there is also discovery to be made beyond in the wide earth. And if time and money permit then plans should be made to open the doors of discovery not for entertainment sake but for opening up the realms of God’s general revelation to ourselves and our children. But places are not the only places of discovery. Our present reality is the people we spend the most time with, but God has created and he sustains people who are living in very different situations than our own. Children and adults will benefit greatly from spending time each week around people whose lives are not like their own.
The time we have been given is not our own. Let us make the best use of the time knowing that the days are evil and that we will be held accountable when our King returns.
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