Blameless and Barren

I am concerned and grieved over an attitude reverberating through parts of the home school community that has the potential to be very emotionally and spiritually harmful, especially since it is not Biblical.  Here it is:  the more spiritual you are, the more you trust God, and the more you "do 'Biblical femininity' right", the more ‘blessings from God (i.e. children)’ you will have.  Well, maybe nobody actually states that idea as blatantly or explicitly as I just did, but it does get voiced subtly, is often alluded to, and it ends up making precious people feel like second class Christians/parents, on whom God has not dispensed His favor, if they don't have lots of children.

Trusting God with everything is the right thing to do, but the number of children in a family is not a manifestation of how godly the parents are or how much they trust Him!  There is so much more than number of children that factors into God's plans.  I invite you to consider Zacharias and Elizabeth, who had no children for a very long time, even though they were righteous and walking blamelessly.  It wasn't about the number of children, but about God's perfect timing and the fulfillment of God's centuries previous prophecy concerning John, forerunner of the promised Messiah.

The parents of John the Baptist were righteous and walking blamelessly we are told in Luke 1, but barren and old.  That’s right—righteous, but old and still barren.  (Luke 1:6-7)  Right at the beginning, God sets out to make it clear that number of children doesn’t correlate to spiritual maturity.  He’s God, and He chooses to work differently with each of us.  His plans are executed on His timetable.  His plans are executed for His purposes.  However much we may pretend we are, or however much we would like to be, we are not the one in charge.

In John’s case, first of all, the older his parents were, the more miraculous the birth of this child would be.  You know how people will talk about these things; and he turned out to be one very talked about baby.  Combine the parents’ age with the prophecy and with Zacharias’ voice loss and miraculous recovery and you see that God engineered a situation that put everyone in anticipation of what He would do next with this child.  Check out Luke 1:57-66.

Second, we know, looking back, that John had to be a contemporary of the Messiah, so if John had come any sooner, the timing would have been all off.  God knows what He’s doing.  What a relief, and what a good thing it is, that we are not the one in charge!

Have you ever puzzled about the timing or circumstances of your own birth or of someone’s in your family?  Have you ever thought about the possibility that you or your child may have been born at just the right time to make one of you a contemporary of a certain someone else in order to fulfill God’s plan?  Centuries ago, Esther’s uncle challenged her to consider, “And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”  (Esther 4:15)

Sadly, for some, 'trusting God' has produced  more guilt and stress, not less, as they worry that their number of children means they have somehow failed to live up to some man-made formula for a man-made definition of God's blessing.  Yes, children are a blessing, but children are not the only way God blesses.  It’s too easy for us to slip into worry and second-guessing when we see only from our limited perspective.  Meanwhile, God sees each of our lives from the perspective of His eternal perfect plans, where each life intersects with the others by design and in just the right rhythm.  His executive planner extends all the way to eternity.  Our calendar may only go to December 2011, or perhaps 2012, but He can see—and has planned for—forever.

Don't be tempted to buy the discouraging lie that the most godly will always have the most children.  It just isn't so, and Zacharias and Elizabeth are proof of it.  Abraham and Sarah are proof.  I repeat:  there is so much more than number of children that factors into God's plans.  A delay could be essential to His precise planning.  One or more of your children may need some special level of time-intensive care or discipleship that He desires you to give in a less crowded setting.  He knows your unique needs, the unique needs of each one in your family, and the unique needs of each one to whom you are called to minister.  Some of the circumstances of your life may not be about you at all, but about someone else whose life will be transformed because of the way He ordered your particular circumstances.

Trusting Him means we choose to be content in Him, period.  We do not compare our lives to someone else’s and expect that God will do the same with us.  We are not to make our own assumptions about what God will or won’t do for us when we submit to Him.  Our calling is to seek Him alone, and, in His wisdom, He may grant us children.  But if we seek children ahead of seeking Christ, we're on the wrong train.  And even if he doesn't grant children, He loves us no less.

In God's plan, we have two biological children.  Pregnancy did not come easily.  Our third and oldest child is actually our newest; we did the unthinkable, from the world’s perspective that is, and, at God’s direction, adopted a teenager who was older than our biological children.  It’s possible that, had we had more biological children, we’d not have been open to adoption when she was in need.  It's also possible that we could not have ministered to her needs, had our family been any bigger.  God knew that a dear, lonely girl needed us and that we needed her, in His way and in His time.

Family design is ultimately not a function of our spirituality but of His sovereignty.  When we forget that, we can become proud and unwittingly wound others for whom Christ died.

The older our children get, and the bigger and more complicated the life decisions become, the more I find myself needing to rest increasingly in His wisdom and sovereignty, seeking His direction at every turn.  With every turn of the pages of His Word, I see anew that He is worthy of our trust—both for the circumstances of our own lives and for the lives of the children we have, don’t have yet, or may never have.

He’s still God and He’s still good. He has perfect plans and the perfect power to fulfill them.  Oh, that we would be content in His arms.