No Kid-ing Around    
    
   Do you have adult children? Did they follow after you, extensions of yourself? 

   With some parents, kids follow in their ways. Other times, a son or daughter sees a better way, and takes it. I learned something about parenting while observing my own kids raising the grand kids. 

   In any case, responsibility is required. God says so.

   We Christians have ideas about how our kids should behave and what they should believe. It's a calling.

   But, how they "turn out," that's on them. Janie B. Cheaney writes in WORLD magazine that "Even in the womb, children are mysteriously themselves." 

   We parents "know how to program, but God knows how to create," she says.

   She notes that Christian parenting is "relentless" in a hostile culture. There are no guarantees. Parents have a duty to raise the children right, but, Cheaney says, God himself creates children...for himself. - John 1:12. 

   A time comes when we take hands-off.

   My first son was turning 4 when I adopted him. One of the first things I did was look for a church for him, though my faith and knowledge were sorely lacking at the time. 

   Then came my daughter and my other son. I wish now I had been more engaged, but like my father, I left most of the "raising" to their mother. Maybe they didn't know how deeply I loved them, because I was out working for them, attending to relentless house and property maintenance, and "church work." 

   Two are solid in the faith, and someday the third will see the light. But all three are good-hearted and talented beyond anything I could have taught them. Yea God! 

      Jimmy