“Make them known to your children and your children’s children.” – Deuteronomy 4:9b

The point I want to make here is based on one simple observation: namely, that Moses expects grandparents to have a relationship with their grandchildren. The reason this is important as we think about parenting is simple. Moses commands the people to consider how they will communicate with their children’s children. This is a forward-looking sort of command. Of course, not every individual will have children or grandchildren. But this does not lessen the force of the command or its implications. The point is not that every person must have children and grandchildren. The point is that young people alive at the time of Moses’ command are being told here to consider how they will relate to their grandchildren, should Yahweh grant the privilege of having them.

Our Children Are Likely Future Parents

How does taking this command seriously affect potential parents and parents of children too young to have children of their own? One of the main effects is that parents of young children will look at their children as potential future parents themselves. This is an important and fascinating outlook on the way that parents think of young children.

What Moses is sitting here is rather simple. Parents are likely future grandparents. This changes the outlook of parents regarding their children and potentially significant ways. It is common for parents to have a sort of tunnel vision, where their goal in life is reduced to surviving the day that they are in. There is some wisdom to this. Parenting can be hard, just like life. And Christ commands us not to worry about tomorrow. This means that parents need to buckle down at times and focus on the tasks that they have before them. They need to do the next thing: feed their baby, the next diaper, clean up the next mess. A lot of parenting is navigating chaos well, in attempting to exercise dominion over it for the sake of children, so that they might have good food, a safe place to live, and loving relationships. The problem is not that any of these things is wrong, but in acting as though they constitute the whole of parenting. 

Beware Tunnel Vision 

Tunnel vision, even by its name, signifies that it is an intentional reduction of focus to only the most urgent and essential things. But that does not mean that things outside of the tunnel are unimportant. And that is what Moses makes clear in this passage. Oftentimes, the urgent will exercise its tyranny over us, forcing us to ignore most prudence, most plans, and most forward thinking. But in the spaces between, when parents rest, when children are asleep, or playing, or becoming more independent, those are times for parents to regain perspective on God, themselves, and their children. It is a time to consider the fact that these little people, Lord willing, are likely to have little people of their own one day. 

It is likely a cause of pangs of guilt and shame for parents to consider how much of their parenting they would be proud of their children imitating with their grandchildren. I am struck as I write this at how small-minded I often am. I know tunnel vision well. As many have said before, the days are long but the years are short. That has proven true in my case. Too often, I have been convicted of only making it through the next day. This is effective for perseverance and putting off sinful anxiety, but in doing so, we should not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

Not to Be Anxious Does Not Excuse Negligence

The command not to be anxious about tomorrow in Matthew 6:37-44 does not reject or negate other instructions to consider the future. We should not be anxious about tomorrow, but “the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance” (Proverbs 21:5). That proverb is one of many sorts of texts that encourage or command an appropriate consideration of the future. Jesus’ command is not to be anxious about tomorrow. That does not mean that we should not think abouttomorrow. Being anxious about something and thinking about something are two very different things.

How then should parents go about preparing their children to be parents? The answer must begin with the parent's heart. How do we think about our children? Are they obstacles to our joy? Are they means to fulfill our selfish desires? Are they obstacles to our laziness? Are they simply inconvenient?

Seek to Be Imitable

It is simple enough to see how our treatment of our children will be colored or tinged by how we think about them. If we think only in terms of today’s goals, we will treat them like only today matters. But that is a short-sighted view of children. Our children will likely be someone else’s parents one day. They will likely give us grandchildren. Shouldn't that likelihood alter our perspective on how we treat them today? I submit that it should.

Passages like this one from Moses provoke us to amend our parenting to make our goals and practices line up with what Scripture commands. It is not easy to consider the future when we feel overwhelmed by the present. However, in reminding us that our children are likely to have children of their own, we are not called to do something we cannot, including to act in the future while we are stuck in the present. Instead, it is a question of the way we think of our children. Our children will not remain children forever. As we parent them, we want them to grow; and as they grow, time will pass, and suddenly we will find ourselves no longer stooping down to pick them up but watching them stoop down to pick up our grandchildren. Where will their first example of how to parent their children come from? It will come from us. Because of that, we should strive to be the kind of parents now who are worth imitating later.