THE SHEPHERD’S CORNER

We cannot escape disappointment!  Ever since we were little, we have been familiar with disappointment—the promised toys did not come; play time was restricted due to misbehavior, etc.  As we grow older, various forms of disappointment entered our lives—we did not get the education we wished, we did not have the jobs we dreamed of, or we did not enjoy a good marriage like we hoped for.

As we grow into our sunset years, a different set of disappointments begin to dawn on us, such as failing health, precarious economies, etc.  Out of these, perhaps the worst is the disappointment over how our children turn out.  We prayed and hoped they would grow up to be all the good that life could offer.  To our disappointment they have become what we wished they would never be.

Tugged in the prophecy against Israel is this Ezekiel’s lament over the present state of the children of Israel (19:5), “When she saw her hope unfulfilled, her expectation gone.”  Ezekiel likened Israel as a lioness, and the northern and the southern kingdoms as her cubs, who grew up to be strong lions but behaved as uncontrolled beasts.  In the end they were captured and put into a “cage.”   

This is every parent’s worst nightmare—that their children who were raised to be strong lions end up in a cage of their own doing.  This is every parent’s deepest and most painful disappointment.  We want to open the cage and free them, but we cannot.  At times because it’s their choice to be in the cage; sometimes because it’s something they had to pay.  However, we can still pray for them while they are in the cage—that they will see themselves honestly, that they will look up to God earnestly, that they will repent totally.

Pastor Paul