Last Saturday evening, November 9, at church, we had two meaningful Q&A events: one for the church’s teenagers with Pastor Shawn Ellis, the communication/media director of Ontario Conference, and the other for their parents with the Willowdale pastors. As part of the pastoral team, I also participated in meaningful conversations with parents. The questions, answers, and discussion were very real, thoughtful, and serious. While it was impossible to cover everything in 90 minutes and come away with 100% satisfactory answers, the fact that the parents of teens, the ministry leaders, and the pastors could come together to talk about the same concerns, pray together, and encourage each other was beneficial enough to make the event worthwhile. All the parents in attendance said they would like to have these conversations more regularly in the future. I believe there will be more to come.
I, too, am a parent of teenagers. Our children are not ours, but God’s; they are God’s children entrusted to us. The secular society we live in is becoming more evil day by day, and our children are exposed to more and more dangers and temptations. In such a time, it is a great challenge for us to raise our children as the ones who reflect the divine character. Therefore, we parents have no choice but to rely on God even more and continue to pray that the Lord will give us wisdom and strength and guide our children.
The Bible is full of stories of great parents. One of the best examples in the Bible must be the parents of Moses: Amram, the father, and Jochebed, the mother (Exod 6:20, Num 26:59). The king of Egypt had given the order to kill every Hebrew newborn boy. But they did not kill their newborn son because they believed “that the time of Israel’s release was drawing near, and that God would raise up a deliverer for His people, determined that their little one should not be sacrificed” (Patriarchs and Prophets, 242). They boldly refused to submit to human authority but chose to believe in, fear, and submit to the living God alone. Even if it meant jeopardizing their safety, they took it to fulfill God’s will. “By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict” (Heb 11:23, NIV).
When the baby became three moths old, however, they no longer could hide and protect him. So, the mother (the Bible indicates that it was ‘she’) made a basket with papyrus and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she laid the baby therein and put the basket “among the reeds along the bank of the Nile” (Exod 2:3). Can you imagine? What must it have been like for a mother to have to leave her precious baby like that? What must it have been like for a mother to make a reed basket for her baby? What was it like for her to carry that basket to the riverbank and put it on the river waters? Can you really imagine? The only thing the mother could do as she looked at the basket was to place the child completely in God’s hands and pray that He would protect and guide Moses. In that way, she offered her son as a child of God.
As we know, God accepted her prayer, and her faith was rewarded. She could raise her child as a nanny hired by an Egyptian princess. With deep gratitude, she faithfully educated her child as God’s. She could only educate him until he turned 12. After that, he had to move to the palace and become a son of the princess of Egypt. He would be exposed to all the corrupting influences of Egypt. What preserved Moses from such evil influences and idolatry was the religious instruction he had received in his early childhood from his mother, who prayed fervently that he might be protected from the evil impressions he would receive in the future and who showed her son the folly and sinfulness of idolatry and taught him the habit of praying to God. We know the rest of the story well. The mother’s faith was passed on to her son, and it paid off in a big way:
“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward” (Heb 11:24-26, NIV).
“How far-reaching in its results was the influence of that one Hebrew woman, and she an exile and a slave! The whole future life of Moses, the great mission which he fulfilled as the leader of Israel, testifies to the importance of the work of the Christian mother. There is no other work that can equal this. To a very great extent the mother holds in her own hands the destiny of her children. She is dealing with developing minds and characters, working not alone for time, but for eternity. She is sowing seed that will spring up and bear fruit, either for good or for evil. She has not to paint a form of beauty upon canvas or to chisel it from marble, but to impress upon a human soul the image of the divine” (Patriarchs and Prophets, 244).
Dear parents at Willowdale, whether your children are young or old, here is our mission and goal. Like the parents of Moses, we are called to dedicate ourselves to God first and then to raise and educate our children as God’s. We all feel and know that this is a highly difficult task. Unless we completely place our children in God’s hands and pray fervently for them, we will not be able to complete this mission. I hope and pray that we parents will pray together for our children and encourage one another in Christ so that we may be like Moses’ parents and our children be like Moses.
As a gift for the parents who share this same burden, I would like to introduce a Korean Christian song, “The Song of Jochebed.” This song expresses the feelings of Moses’ mother, Jochebed, in a very touching way. When I first listened to this song, I burst into tears. I believe this song will be a blessing to you as well. The first one is in Korean. The second is an English cover by the wife of a Korean Adventist pastor. My prayers and full support are with you, all the parents of Willowdale.
Pastor Dae-Eun Kim