The following item
gives a perspective on parenting that most people and even parents typically
never consider or think about in that the children that they are entrusted with
are a temporary responsibility that they take on, not one of permanence.
The writer of this
piece claims that her time and experience as a foster parent revealed to her
this reality that she might not have learned as a biological parent. She explains:
Foster care does
not introduce a fundamentally different kind of parenthood. It merely strips
away an illusion that biological parents are more easily permitted to maintain.
Foster parents know from the first day that the child in their home may not
remain there. Every court hearing reminds them that the future is contingent.
Every packed suitcase, every supervised visit, every phone call from a social
worker makes visible the limits of their control.
Yet those same
limits govern every parent; foster care simply makes them harder to ignore.
For all our
language of having children, they have never truly belonged to us. We cannot
call them into being. The long and painful road of infertility, and the
extraordinary lengths to which many couples go in the hope of conceiving, bears
witness to that reality. Even after they arrive, we cannot guarantee a single
additional day of their lives. Childhood cancer does not consult family
calendars, and accidents do not always distinguish between the prepared and the
negligent. Nor can we ultimately determine the shape of their souls. They may
embrace the faith we have spent years teaching them, or they may reject it.
They may remain close to us, or they may walk away.
Every parent,
after all, is simply a temporary custodian. We simply spend most of our lives
pretending otherwise. [1]
But that doesn’t
mean that parents, be they foster, adoptive, or biological, should not love
their children or invest any less in them, but what she is saying that is that
we are not to expect that child/parent relationship to have the same level of
permanence to it like we would a marriage.
She further states:
For all our
language of having children, they have never truly belonged to us. We cannot
call them into being. The long and painful road of infertility, and the
extraordinary lengths to which many couples go in the hope of conceiving, bears
witness to that reality. Even after they arrive, we cannot guarantee a single
additional day of their lives. Childhood cancer does not consult family
calendars, and accidents do not always distinguish between the prepared and the
negligent. Nor can we ultimately determine the shape of their souls. They may
embrace the faith we have spent years teaching them, or they may reject it.
They may remain close to us, or they may walk away…
My task is not to
possess them, nor even to secure every imaginable good for them. I cannot save
their bodies from suffering any more than I can save their souls by force of
will. I can only receive them with gratitude, love them faithfully, bear
witness to Christ before them, and accompany them for as long as God, in His
providence, allows our paths to intersect.
That is all any
parent has ever been called to do. [2]
As I was reading
this column, I found it serving as a broader illustration of how we, even as
professing followers of Christ, tend to set our sites more on the temporal than
we do on the eternal when we need to set our sites on the eternal and those
things that were designed to be more permanent in our lives than those things that
were only meant to be temporary.
There is a reason
why we are called to store up treasures in Heaven instead of treasures on earth
(Mt. 6:19-21) and that is because the treasures on earth are only temporary and
can be lost in an instant whereas the treasures in Heaven are forever and can
never be lost to us.
There is a reason
why we are called to love God above all else, and yes, more than even our own
offspring (Mt. 10:37, Mk. 10:29-30) and that is because He is eternal and our
relationship with Him is an eternal one; all other relationships are temporary
in comparison as they are subject to failure for several reasons; the main
reason being that we are all inherently corrupt beings with an inherently
prideful and selfish nature and when such tendencies arise, strains are placed
on relationships and can even result in failure, and it is this inherently selfish
and corrupt nature within us that can cause even those closest to us and in
whom we have place our full trust and confidence to betray and abandon us and
that includes even those we never thought would ever leave our side, harm, or
betray us. Relationships also become
strained or even fail due to incompatibility and even when they don’t fail,
they can still be ended by death itself since all of us who are born into this
life are subject to death and death is no discriminator of persons which is why
the child is no more guaranteed a day more of life than the man in his twilight
years.
The best that we
can do is to be grateful for each person God brings into our lives as long as He
wills for them to be a part of our lives to whatever extent He deems fit but no
person, no matter how close we may be to them, even if they happen to be our
children, will ever be worthy of our full unwavering trust and confidence
because they can break that trust for any given reason at any given moment, but
the one thing that we can be certain of is that God will never stop loving us. He will never abandon us. And He is always faithful in the keeping of
His Word.
That isn’t to say
that we are not in need of earthly relationships; we are in need of earthly
relationships because God declared that it is not good for the man to be alone
(Gen. 2:18) but that is a subject for another time, but at the same time, we
should never place earthly relationships above the relationship that lasts for
eternity and that is our relationship with God because He is the one who will
hand out the final rewards and final honors as well as the final sentences.
Because eternity
lasts forever, we need to spend the temporal life to make the best that can be
made of the eternity to come. That is
not to say that we neglect our earthly responsibilities and obligations, and
that is not to say that we can’t take joy and pleasure in the temporal, but at
the same time, we cannot allow the temporal to distract us from the things of
the eternal because God is the provider of even that which is temporal and what
He does provide, He can most certainly take away or withhold if He deems doing
so necessary.
A day is coming
when the temporal will be done away with and in place of the temporal will come
that which is eternal because that which is temporal falls short of the glory of
the eternal and neither will the two ever be compatible because all things
temporal have fallen from the perfected state in which they were created due to
the entry of sin and death into the world through a fateful transgression of astronomical
consequence that was committed by the first man Adam and the first woman Eve and
the fateful transgression that they committed was the eating of a fruit from a
certain tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, having been warned
by God that in the day that they would eat thereof, they would surely die (Gen.
2:16-17, 3:3) but before the transgression, there was no sin and there was no
death in the world, neither was there any pain, suffering, or hardship because the
world was created in a state of perfection, but when the transgression was
committed, it was in that day that sin entered into the world through Adam and
his wife Eve and with that sin came the sentence of death upon them of which
they had been warned (Gen. 3:19) and to which they eventually succumbed.
But the
consequences of that act of disobedience did not stop with Adam and Eve, but
were extended to the rest of mankind who are descended from them for it is from
Adam and Eve that the sin that entered into them was inherited by all of
mankind (Rom. 5:12) sin being defined not by just an evil act or ill-spoken
words but by the corrupted condition of our nature which not only influences
our outward behavior and what we speak, but it also influences our thoughts,
motives, and attitudes which then, if given into, produce what is said and the
acts that are done which is why it is written that we are not defiled by what
comes from without but what is from within (Mt. 15:11, 18-20) and which is why
that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) which in turn
subjugates us to death which is why it is written that the wages of sins is
death (Rom. 6:23) but the consequences of Adam and Eve’s disobedience still
does not stop with even mankind, but extends to all of creation and is why
death, sin, suffering, pain, sorrow, grief, anguish, and evil abound in this
present world and throughout all of creation which is why it is written that
the entire creation groans and travails in pain to this day (Rom. 8:19-22)
Due to the
pervasiveness of sin, the Lord God Almighty sees it necessary to eventually do
away with the present temporal world and to make it anew but that also will
require eliminating all who remain in their sins because sin has no place in
the new and better world to come; only they who are cleansed of their sins will
be made citizens of that new and better world.
And the Lord God
Almighty is not willing that any should perish or be shut out of His Kingdom,
but that all would come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9) and because God takes
pleasure in love and in mercy and not in punishment and destruction, He has
provided for us redemption in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior whom God sent
into the world to offer Himself up on our behalf for our sins and to take away
the sins of the world which He did by His death on the cross upon which He was
crucified whose sinless blood (2 Cor. 5:21, Heb. 4:15) purchased redemption on
behalf of sinful man and after having purchased our redemption in His death,
was raised again from the dead so that we, if we will but place our faith in
Him for the forgiveness of our sin and for the salvation of our souls, will be
made justified in Him in the sight of God the Father. (Rom. 4:25)
And it is the
redemption of our souls that we receive in us an inward transformation (2 Cor.
5:17) that causes us to no longer desire to follow after selfish and worldly
pursuits but after those things that pertain to the Kingdom of Heaven,
to no longer take
pleasure in those things that are evil and displeasing in the sight of the
Lord, but in that which is good, right, and pleasing in His sight,
to no longer
desire to walk in the lies of this present world, but only in the truth that
comes from Christ Almighty who is the source of all truth, (Jn. 14:6)
no longer placing
our hopes in the things of this present world, but looking forward to that new
and better world to come, (Rev. 21-22)
to no longer rely
on worldly resources, men, or even our own power, abilities, skills, and wisdom
for our needs and provision but upon God who is able to meet all of our needs,
recognizing that the resources of this world and even the people He brings into
our lives are but instruments and vessels through which God meets our needs and
that the skills, power, knowledge, and wisdom by which we might acquire our
provision are provided and instilled in us by God, (Mt. 6:25-33)
to no longer fear
what men can do to us, but rather fearing the God before whom we will have to
one day give an account for how we lived our lives, (Mt. 10:28)
to no longer look
to corruptible institutions within our society for direction and order in our
lives but to God who, by His written Word has given us laws and precepts to be
applied to our lives and which serve to produce and maintain an ordered life, and
who, by His Holy Spirit which comes to dwell within us upon repentance,
establishes in our lives a course and direction in our lives to pursue for His
glory,
to no longer seek
our own glory but the glory of God,
to no longer rally
behind corruptible men, but instead behind the incorruptible God in Heaven
bearing in mind that those men and women God raises up for our edification are
but instruments and servants of His for that respective purpose to which He has
called them,
to no longer seek
to align ourselves with the things of darkness but only with the things of the
light,
to no longer trust
in the wisdom of the world but only on the wisdom and knowledge that comes from
above, (Jas. 1:5) nor depend on corruptible earthly authorities to swiftly
administer justice, but only in the power of God to deliver us from evil.
And just as our
souls have been cleansed of sin, so one day we will also be liberated from
bodily death when the forms subject to death and corruption in which we live
are transformed into that which is incorruptible (2 Cor. 15:51-55, 1 Thess.
4:13-18) and in that which is incorruptible there is no sin and where there is
no sin, there is no death, which is why when our bodies are turned into sinless
forms, they will no longer die, and after we have been liberated from death,
creation itself will also be liberated from the curse that has come upon it due
to the transgression of Adam when it is made anew and when it is made anew,
there will be no death, no sin, no evil, no suffering, no hardship, no pain, no
grief, and no sadness, but only be light, life, happiness, joy and contentment
before the Lord God Almighty who will make His dwelling among men. (Rev. 21-22)
If you have not
already done so and want to be assured that you will be admitted into the
Kingdom of Heaven, there is no better assurance of that but through Christ
Jesus. It is just a sincere prayer of
repentance away:
"Lord Jesus I
need you.
I realize that I
am a sinner
who has fallen
short of the glory of God
and that my
goodness falls short
of your standard
of Moral perfection.
Please forgive me
of all of my sins.
Come into my heart
and into my life
to be the Savior
and Lord of my life.
Make me into the
servant and follower
that you want me
to be.
In your name Lord
Jesus, I pray.
Amen."
Know that God is
not concerned with the words that you use to call upon Him forgiveness, but
with the attitude of your heart and if you have, with all sincerity, have asked
Christ to forgive you of your sins, placing your trust in Him only for your
salvation and in nothing else, then your sins are forgiven and your place in
Heaven is certain.
End notes:
1. Liza Ashley, Op-ed contributor, “I'm a foster
mom. Here's what people get wrong about 'real' parenting,” Christian Post,
August 27, 2026
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/im-a-foster-mom-what-people-get-wrong-about-real-parenting.html?utm_source=notifpush.com&utm_medium=web-push
2. Ibid.
Scripture
references:
1. Matthew 6:19-21
2. Matthew 10:37, Mark 10:29-30
3. Genesis 2:18
4. Genesis 2:16-17, 3:3
5. Romans 5:12
6. Matthew 15:11, 18-20
7. Romans 3:23
8. Romans 6:23
9. Romans 8:19-22
10. 2 Peter 3:9
11. 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15
12. Romans 4:25
13. 2 Corinthians 5:17
14. John 14:6
15. Revelation 21-22
16. Matthew 6:25-33
17. Matthew 10:28
18. James 1:5
19. 1 Corinthians 15:51-55, 1 Thessalonians
4:13-18
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