Shaping Children Individually
Not long ago my daughter had a piano test on the same day as a spelling and math test. I caught myself saying to her today, "Do your homework before your piano. Schoolwork comes first..." and then I thought to myself, "Does it?"
She is a very musical child and is thriving at piano, and on the other hand, she's never going to be an accountant... Why do we find it so easy to bow to the education's system of priorities, rather than shape our children according to the latent potential that is within each of them? It is said that children are like arrows in the hands of their father. If this is so, then our responsibility is not only to find the correct target for each of our arrows so we can send them off into the world with perfect aim, but also we need to shape and mould our arrows in a way that is unique and specific to the flights that we discern lie before them. We need to be seeking God for the futures of each of our children, asking their maker what He meant when He made them. How exactly would this girl or boy be fully reaching the unique potential for which they were designed? It reminds me of Michelangelo's statement when carving the great statue of David out of marble. A few great sculptors had tried before him and failed, and he was asked how he managed to succeed. He replied, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." Oh, that God would give us parents wise and discerning eyes that can see in each child the masterpiece that God intends, and form and shape them for their intended destiny and not the world's conformed image, produced on an assembly-line of uniformity.
