Grieving over Our Children
As parents, we have a very strong love for our children that begins even before their birth. We want what is best for each one of them. We desire for them to be happy and successful in their lives, and we do what we can to lead them to accomplish the right things. As Christians, we teach them about the Lord, and we lead them to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. However, sometimes things don't go the way we hoped they would go.
That is what happened to Ephraim. (I Chronicles 7:21,22) Two of his sons were killed when they were trying to steal livestock from the local farmers near Gath. Ephraim mourned for them for a long time, and his relatives came to comfort him. Ephraim suffered two blows, the fact that his sons were thieves and seeing them die early in life. These things could happen to any of us, and maybe they have already happened to you.
There is grief and shame that comes when one of our children turns away from the Lord and His will for their life. We grieve because we lose the dream we had for them to be righteous and do well in life. That causes us sadness, so we mourn over this turn of events. Also, we can feel that we were the cause of what happened, because we did not raise them well enough. That is not always true, since our children make their own choices, but it can still cause us to grieve over any shortcomings we felt we had. We need God's comfort for all of these things, so we can grieve in a healthy way.
Then, there is the case of our children dying at a young age, or dying before we die. That is something that doesn't usually happen to a parent, and when it does, it brings a special grief. We need God's comfort, and we need the rest of the family to gather around us to comfort us. I saw this with my parents losing my sister at 24, and it was so helpful that we were able to move close to them and help them through their grief. I know God will bring any of us comfort in these cases, if we will turn to Him and cast our cares on Him. He will heal us over time.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read I Chronicles 8-10.