Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before.
Everybody is so much into other people's lives today. It is like our lives are one big soap opera. Or perhaps using today's popular shows, one big reality show. A quiet life is hard to come by today. Even vacations end up being more work than quiet. We cram so much into that week off we need another week to recuperate.
The old empty nest thing seems to have shifted to parents being too involved in children's lives. Many a grandparent today seems to be raising their grandchildren. Sure, it enables the parents to work two jobs and get ahead faster. But does enablement produce healthy growth?
I am from the era where one parent worked and the other stayed home and raised the children. Everyone ate together at dinner time. And they spent time together instead of finding more and more ways to get out of the house. Family time was important and mom and dad could always be depended on to be there.
Then when they grew up and left the home they were on their own. They made their own mistakes and figured out what to do next. They did not depend on mom or dad to bail them out all the time, but they knew if things got real bad that their parents would be there. And that no matter what choices were made the parents would stand behind them and support their choice no matter how right or wrong that choice was.
Minding our own business is a hard thing to do, especially for a parent. Today parents are labeled helicopter parents because they seem to constantly hover over the children, even their grown up and married ones!
Lord help us to mind our own business in the workplace, with our friends, and with our children and their families. Enable us to be prayer warriors for them and give us the wisdom needed to answer their questions without jumping in to solve their problems. May we be good examples for them of how to trust in You, Lord. Let your light shine through us and may our mouths be filled with encouraging words. Thank you, Jesus!
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