He Knows Our Frame
The Psalmist testifies according to God’s own parenting ‘technique’ in Psalm 103:
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
For our Heavenly Father, parenting begins with perspective. Somehow, God has not given us what we deserve. In fact, the extent to which the King of all kings forbears and forgives is so vast that it can not be measured with any human instrument.
The simple motive for His mercy here is that God remembers. Note the reference in the Psalm to the father who “pities his children.” God used an earthly father as an example to help us understand how our divine Father behaves toward us. This must say something of what God expects from parents. For if we have not already learned to pity our children—with all of their sin, all of their character flaws—then, let us take the converse of the psalm and say that since God pities us and remembers that we are but dust, then we should pity our children and treat them with mercy so immeasurable, no instrument conceived by man—and certainly no formula devised in a how-to book—could ever fully describe it.
(This focus on mercy does not exclude the oft needed discipline for young children. The spirit in which we discipline should always be tempered with mercy. The word “pity” in Hebrew is the word for “compassion” which is related to the idea of the protection found in a mother’s womb.)
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