“And he [Esau] lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are these with thee? And he [Jacob] said, The children whom God hath graciously given your servant” (Gen. 33:5).

It may seem to some especially shortsighted to turn back the pages of the years almost to the beginning of time itself, to learn how to be a Christian parent, especially when so much free advice is being offered to help us today. If we read everything that is being written today on the subject of marriage and the home, husband and wife relationships, parents and children, etc., we would have no time remaining for the serious work of building our home for the Lord Jesus Christ.

It may seem in this revolutionary age that the nomadic life of Jacob and Esau is a far-cry from life lived in a busy city, a teeming ghetto, or the shadows of a violent city . Yet, human life, ancient or modern, city-spent or country-lived, tent-or apartment-dweller, etc., is much the same! Because human nature is essentially the same, whether lived 2000 years before the cross of Calvary or 2000 years after.

One of the truly “great” nights of the Bible had just ended. Jacob had been changed by his God to Israel, “prince with God,” and now the morning brought the reunion of two men who had not seen each other for approximately 20 years. As the one surveys the possessions of the other, he is moved to ask the question that is still so vitally relevant today: “Whose are the women and children with thee?” Jacob’s inspired answer, is in reality twofold: first, children belong to God; second, children belong to us as God’s gifts.

Children are first, primarily, and eternally God‘s heritage!

Jacob was returning to his father‘s country a far different man than when he went out. Instead of a solitary fugitive he was coming home a rich man. With such personal riches that he, with commendable caution, divided his great company into three groups, and with rare chivalry placed himself in front of the foremost company. However, God having met Esau first, Jacob had nothing to fear for their meeting was as friendly as any encounter has ever been. And as they embraced, the eyes of Esau fall upon the company of his brother who had gone out unmarried and fatherless, but returns home with wives and children. When inquiry is made concerning the origin of this company, the old boaster and proud schemer answers his brother in words that trace these and a1l our possessions to the All-Bountiful Giver: “These are the children whom God hath graciously given your servant.”

When Jacob calls children “the gift of God,” he sounds, does he not, a note directly opposed to most of modern thought? In this day of what has been called the “sexplosion,” the day of pressure for relaxed abortion laws in practically every segment of our society, the day of continuing debate within the church over birth control legislation, the role of the homosexual in society and church, etc., it certainly doesn‘t seem very modern to look upon children, ours or anyone’s as really belonging first and primarily to God, does it? And to say the least, it certainly is foreign to the Women‘s Liberation Movement!

The independent “Committee for Women in the Christian Reformed Church” in its publicly distributed bibliography advocates the reading of Betty Fredian‘s popular book, The Feminine Mystique. In recommending this and other secular books, the committee’s rationale is this: “It is highly recommended that Christian women acquaint themselves with this secular source in order to have a more balanced perspective of the entire women‘s movement.” Well, because I too wanted to get that “more balanced perspective” I went to the library to secure the book and this is what I discovered: “The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only [italics mine] commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity” (p. 43). That certainly “fits” in well with this era of smaller families, with married women who deliberately exclude themselves completely from motherhood as slavery and bondage, and with couples who speak of their family planning as though children are the whims of biological union, rather than as the Bible teaches, the creation of God!

These are the children whom God hath graciously given!

Mother‘s Day 1977 is, therefore, a beautiful reminder of the Lord‘s heritage. Just travel this mother‘s day briefly through Scripture and listen:

– the first woman who ever cradled a baby in her arms was mother Eve and she exclaimed: “I have gotten a man child from the Lord”;

– or hear Sarah who receives the son of promise in her old age and sings: “God has made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me . . . . I have borne him a son in his old age.” And she called him “Isaac” meaning laughter, joy, happiness so that all who saw him would remember his parents’ happiness when he was born.

– or hear Rebecca, leaving home to become the bride of Isaac whom she had never seen, and as her relatives bid her good-bye they confer upon her this blessing: “Be thou the mother of thousands of millions.”

– or listen to Rachel, Jacob‘s favorite, when her son was born she said: “God hath endowed me with a good dowry!”

– or re-read Psalm 128 for our Mother‘s Day table devotions and the description of the happy man with his wife and children round his table, as branches of the verdant olive-tree.

– and what shall we say of the others? the Shunamite woman? Hannah? Elizabeth? Mary?

Parents, don’t sell our children short of their birthright! Teach them as they are being taught today apart from the Christian classroom that they are the product of their environment and the outcome of an evolutionary process and you will soon account for the animal behavior of looay’s society. But tell them, beginning at home, and re-enforced at church and in the Christian School, that they are the Lord‘s, and they will see themselves in the beautiful context of Psalm 8. Each precious child, a gift from the Lord with an eternal soul, an eternal place in His Kingdom, etc. Are you daddy‘s girl? Mommy’s boy? Grandpa and grandma’s darling? Tell them and tell them early that they are children of their Heavenly Father!

Yes, a heritage received. But a heritage to be guarded for one day that gift(s) will have to be returned to the Giver. We have our children only as trusts, and that for only a very brief time. One day we are going to give our account to Him what we did with the gifts we received from Him, and what a terrifying guilt will be ours if we failed to point them to their Heavenly Father faithfully and daily! That is why God in His sovereign wisdom saw fit to give His children, not to the state as in communist controlled countries, nor even to His church, but to parents who had better hold them close to their heart and prayerfully close to the heart of God.

Esau said: “Whose children are these?” In this month of May as another Mother‘s Day approaches and fades, shall we answer with Jacob: “They once were God’s; now they are mine for a time, but whose will they be when they grow up?”

Dear Lord, I do not ask That Thou shouldst give me some high work of Thine Some noble calling or some wondrous task Give me a little hand to hold in mine.

I do not ask that 1 should ever stand Among the wise, the worthy or the great; I only ask, that, softly, hand in hand, My child and I may enter at Thy gate.

My opportunity? I need not seek it far I hold it in my arms each day. Dear Lord, two trusting hands uplifted are A little child—my opportunity!

Garrett H. Stoutmeyer is pastor of the Faith Christian Reformed Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan.