Because Of Your Investment

Next door lives a couple our parents’ age. They are wonderful. They share their produce with us. They’ve invited us over on holidays. They’ve even loaned us their beautiful home when we didn't have room for our guests.

Their grandson and our children share a bus stop – half a mile down the lane. We’ve often visited, cars idling, waiting for our children’s bus.

At one point they kindly suggested a carpool for the bus stop pick-up – to cut our individual time commitment in half.

Something inside me said, “No.”

But I smiled and replied, “Maybe we should.”

Later, I wondered what had stirred my spirit. Why would I turn down more personal time? What was it my spirit didn’t want to compromise?

Relationship.

Those few minutes of driving from the bus stop is relational time with our children. It was my time to ask how their day was – what was the best part and what was the worst? I’d ask how much homework and of what type. Oftentimes it was time to be silly together, share stories from our day, or observe the day's beauty as we drove down our lane. It was a time of letting the stress roll off from my workday and from their school day.

Those minutes also informed me how they were doing. Did they need my sympathy? My listening ear? Did they need a motivational speech or encouragement? Sometimes I sensed something deeper which called for setting aside time for them that evening.

I can see many ways those few minutes have been critical for the life of our family. But it may be I will never know how important those five minutes each day truly were. That is how these things are.

Years ago I read a book called, In Praise of Slowness, by Carl Honore. It is not a Christian book but its premise is deeply Christian. It promotes living at a natural and healthier pace. It demonstrates how the culture's promise of “the easy life” has slowly and insidiously stolen “the good life” – in every category of life.

Here is a statistic from the chapter on food. It summarizes the author’s general point: In the last 100 years the varieties of artichoke in Italy have been reduced from about 200 to about 12.

Each of those varieties had its own flavor, coloring, size… any number of beautiful nuances. But because our culture invests in efficiency – shorter maturation periods, greater resilience, and less labor cost – we are left with 12 out of 200. These 12 might be the least interesting and inspiring of the 200 – more like weeds than vegetable. We will never know.

Our culture is constantly looking for parenting "hacks" – focused on short maturation periods, greater resilience, and less labor cost.

We each might suspect our children are particularly difficult to nurture and cultivate. But the fruit of your labor might just result in the most rare, beautiful, and delightful person the world has known. A true gift.

“And whoever welcomes one child like this in My name welcomes Me.”
 – Matthew 18:5