Passing Away or Abiding Forever?

1 John 2:15-17

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions - is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

1 John 2:15-17 is this week's memory verse passage in our church's scripture memory plan. Each day during our Bible time the children and I work on memorizing the verses. I write out each word on a small card (an old business card works great if you have a box of a thousand outdated ones lying around) and then we shuffle the cards, pass them out, and put them in order. Even our four-year-old participates searching for the next word to build the verse. I make fill-in-the-blank verses for the children to complete. The children use the verses as their handwriting practice or make art work surrounding the week's written verse. We practice in any number of kid-friendly ways.

My husband works on memorizing the passage on his way to and from work, and they all practice together at supper. We usually begin the week with lots of explaining so they understand the words in the passage. The more I explained the words to this weeks passage above the more convicted I became of my own love of the world. I am thankful for God's patient kindness drawing us back in repentance (Romans 2:4). This kind of conviction in His kindness is so sweet for me to realize.

On my own I could have easily chosen to love the things of the world, desires that may at times seem even good and worthy (peace, structure, etc.), but desires that quickly pass away. On my own I would have chosen to love easy children without disabilities. I would have chosen to love having a family free from crisis, trauma, and exhausting needs. I would have chosen to love the power of being able to maintain my control, order, structure and peace in my home. Each of these things reeks of the world - they are the desires that satisfy my flesh and make me comfortable, or my eyes and make me look good, or my pride in possessions and make me feel filled up and momentarily contented. And they all pass away eventually.

As I meditated on this verse with our children yesterday, I was helping two of the children work through an argument. We talked about how we would handle the situation if we were loving the things of the world or how we would handle it differently if we were doing the will of God. I asked the children if their argument was over something that was passing away and if their actions and attitudes showed their desire to abide forever (do the will of God). They quickly realized it was something trivial, and with minimal help they saw that doing the will of God by doing justice, loving kindness, and being humble (Micah 6:8) would be the best choice.

Sometimes my own realizations have not been so quick and I have labored over choosing the will of God over things that pass away. I have recently come to see how very precious the gift of each of my children has been to me, even those who I have struggled to love well and whose disabilities and hurts I have grieved over. These sweet children, whose needs are great, have earthly bodies that will ultimately pass away. My desire is for their hearts, that they may abide forever through knowing and choosing the will of God through salvation. What a gift this has been for me to be able to see stumbling blocks in my own life where I have chosen to love the things of the world that will all pass away. Through the challenges of parenting these beautiful children I have been drawn to the cross in dependence on Him daily.

Today as I reflect on our choices and challenges I am able to see them through a different lens and evaluate them by meditating on 1 John 2:15-17 asking: Passing Away or Abiding Forever?