Seasons
Jack Radcliffe
8/28/2008

Over Memorial Day weekend I decided it was time to clean out the garage. It hadn’t been done since we moved into our house a little over a year ago. Since the garage has been serving as the storage area for boxes of stuff that doesn’t yet have a place, our cars have been banished to the driveway from day one. At one time our belongings were stacked neatly. Then the kids went looking for things. Enough said.

It’s wild what you find when you’re not looking for it. I was looking for ways to consolidate boxes and make room for one car. No such luck. However, what I found made my job a whole lot more fun even though it took a whole lot longer.

We’ve always been lousy at cataloging our pictures. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find several boxes of loose pictures spanning our lifetimes but I was, and they pleasantly surprised me. In between moving things to the driveway, reorganizing them, and putting them back, I found myself stopping occasionally to look through the pictures and remember the seasons of my life.

There were images of my youth alongside those of my kids in various stages of growth and, of course, poses (Did they come from me?); snapshots of family and friends who have blessed our lives; and memories recorded on film of experiences that have left us forever changed. The experiences that have given me some of my most incredible joys and miserable failures have been raising my kids.

There’s not much in the Bible that speaks specifically about raising kids, but there is one passage that screams to dads in particular: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). There’s a lot to unpack from this verse. In a nutshell, it’s telling us dads to not frustrate our kids by harping at them, pushing them, or correcting them each time they step out of line.

Easier said than done; just ask my kids. While I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to apologize, I do remember with vividness the times I got it right—they are easier to count. Like just last week. I discovered one of my boys and his friends doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. Fortunately for them, I had just finished preparing for a parenting seminar I was conducting that week and all the right things were fresh in my mind. (By the way, parenting seminars are led not by people who are parenting experts but by parents who have learned from making a lot of mistakes.)

After sending his friends home, talking about what happened, and agreeing on the course of action, I asked him if he thought it was fair. I think he was being harder on himself than I was. He said, “No. It’s gracious.” In those words, I found something I hadn’t been looking for. In what was probably his most embarrassing moment, my son understood the concept of grace that I had hoped I was teaching him his whole life! All of a sudden, nothing else mattered. I told him that’s exactly how God deals with me every time I mess up.

I often have felt very inadequate for this season of my life when I’m responsible to “bring [my kids] up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.” There may be those seasons in your life when you feel that way too. Then God shows he’s faithful. It’s like a good golf shot. It makes you want to stay in the game.

Jack Radcliffe is a husband and father, pastor, ministry consultant, and coach with Youth Ministry Architects and the Center for Youth Ministry Training, both in Nashville, TN. He is also an adjunct professor at Martin Methodist College and a seminar presenter for ParenTeen (www.parenteen.com). He has an MDiv from Ashland Theological Seminary in Ohio and a DMin in Youth and Family Ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary.