Empty Nest Reflections
 
The day I am writing this Claire and I have been “Empty-Nesters” a grand total of 4 days.  We have been anticipating this day with mixed feelings.  We wondered what it would be like and recognized that things were going to be different.  Dinners will no longer be interacting with our children and the events of their day.  We won’t just be sitting back and enjoying the bantering and laughing that our meal times with our children have been.  It will be different.
 
Our relationship with our children has been changing of course.  As we look back we see it growing from tending to every need to letting them make more and more decisions on their own.  As we have encouraged them to do this more and more, we have seen them rise to the challenge (quite well I think but I must admit to having a large bias in that respect).  They are making their own decisions and plans for their lives.
 
That is not to say that they still don’t ask for help and advice.  We are certainly still connected to our college students financially.  However, the fact is that we’ve reared them the best we could and now it’s their turn to take a stab at being adults.
 
As we dropped off Matt, our youngest, it struck me that for each of our children, they were doing something I never had to do.  Since I went to college in the same city where I grew up and, for financial reasons, lived at home while going to school.  I didn’t move out from my parent’s home until Claire and I got married.  I wasn’t really ever away from home.  As I realized that our children all had gone to a place that clearly wasn’t any form of home, my pride and admiration for them increased.  It had to be scary, especially at first, but they did it.
 
As I thought further about this, I’m very thankful that as children of God, we don’t ever have to leave home and move away.  Certainly we grow in our walk with our Lord.  I hope that I’m more mature now than I was as a child.  Yet, our Father is always there.  Even in those times where it is scary.  Even in those times when things seem altogether uncertain and worrisome.  Our Father is always there.
 
And not only just there, but He is there as a loving caring Father who knows what is best for His children and who is able to do it as well.  Our God is our Father.  In Galatians 4:6-7, Paul writes, “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”
 
As God’s children, we are not only cared for, but have promises that are truly amazing.  Let’s thank God that we never have to leave the nest of our Father.
 
 
Pastor Jerry                                                                                          
September 2006