This post originally appeared in the December 16, 2013 Madison Park Church blog: Pastor’s Column – Our Time is Short
When I was younger, I would roll my eyes whenever my mom would say, “My how time flies!” Now, as I celebrate ten years as your children’s pastor, I find myself saying the same thing. Our time in children’s ministry began before I came on staff. Kevin and I helped in preschool and elementary classes. When North went south to Anderson High school, I got to coordinate some of the children’s classes. During that time, we’ve seen babies become teenagers. Children have become adults. Some of those kids we first taught are bringing their own babies into the nursery.
When I came on staff, my son was eleven and my daughter was seven years old. Today, Garrett is twenty-one years old and a junior at Anderson University. Mariah is seventeen and a junior at Pendleton Heights. We have our children for just a minute, and then they’re grown!
Time is so precious! If a child came into children’s ministry every Sunday and Wednesday for the last ten years, he or she would have spent 1,000 hours in ministry. That seems like a lot of hours, until your realize that is equal to just over forty, twenty-four hour days. Out of ten years, TRAKs has less than two months of time to teach our children about Jesus! (And that’s if the child is at church twice a week, every week we’re open!) We don’t have much time!
And parents have little time as well. Between birth and graduation, a parent has 940 Sunday’s with their child. Parents need to get serious with the time they have now! It will be gone before they know it. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12 (NIV)
Psalm chapter ninety is a prayer of Moses. The Bible says Moses lived to be 120 years old. Yet, he is talking in this chapter of how we are so fragile and gone in an instant. It isn’t the kind of thing you’d expect from an old guy that didn’t get a new career as deliverer and law giver until he was eighty years old! Moses knew that time mattered.
Take the time to teach your kids what matters most. We at TRAKs love to see your children come through the door. We also know we have even less time with them to teach them about what matters than you do.
Parents, may your prayer be that you realize how short you have your children. We live in a world that distracts us from the things that matter most. TV, the internet, academic pursuits and sports all compete for a child’s time. Parents have those distractions and work and family. It can be easy to let spiritual pursuits take a back seat if you aren’t reminded how short time really is.
We must fight for what’s important. We tend to make what matters—matter more. If we truly believe Jesus saved us, then we owe it to the children to share that good news with them. God knew our time with our kids is short and how easy it is for us to get distracted. He spoke through Moses to all generations in Deuteronomy, chapter six: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4–8 (NIV)
Our relationship with God is just too important to let it become a low priority. Even more important, our children’s relationship with God is too important to let it become an afterthought.
