Cultivating a Servant's Heart
What is our heart in parenting?
Are we trying to raise up trophies who achieve all the prizes and are the picture of success in the world?
Are we trying to just go through the motions of passing on the family name the next generation?
Are we just fulfilling a dream of a spouse to have children? Or expectations of parents to become grandparents?
This week, we want to talk about cultivating the heart of Christ in ourselves as parents as we seek to raise our children and that begins with the formation of a heart of a servant.
As parents, we are privilege in forming the hearts of our children, playing a key role not just in forming the next generation but also the starting steps of eternal lives. Amidst all of the cries, and screams, and demands, the natural tendencies of our hearts can be to turn resentful towards these little ones who may always seem like their demanding from us, but we have the example of Christ before us:
"who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." - Philippians 2:6-8
Christ came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many, as He tells the eager apostles James and John who seek to have the highest positions in the Messiah's Kingdom.
Parenting too is a space of humility and seeking to serve and show that self-giving. unconditional, sacrificial love on behalf of our children. it's with that kind of love that God has loved us and desires for us to love others, and especially our children with.
We love the prayer of St. Francis and think it's an excellent one to pray and meditate upon in cultivating a servant's heart in ourselves as parents:
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life."
-St. Francis of Assisi
