Richard Dawson, 18 February 2016

Give a thought... I’m going to ask you this morning to be a little, just a little, self-centred. You see I want to invite you to consider the thing you call your faith or your belief or your Christian commitment as you would a child. Not just any child, but your child. A child you have parented and are parenting. A child you care deeply about and want to see prosper (for surely all parents want their children to prosper and to enjoy life and all it has to offer.) Furthermore I want you to consider the depth of compassion and love you have for your child. In many ways this is how we need to look at our faith—we need to see it as a child which needs all the love, care and attention of a child and something which, with these things, can prosper and grow but without these things will, quite simply, not.
So…. How will you help your child to grow this year? How will you care for it? How will you invest in that child to make sure that it becomes all that it can become and passes on the love of Christ to it’s child and to others? I don’t intend to answer that today but I do want to make a strong case for us to consider how we might ‘care for our faith-child’ this year. Most parents make some clear decisions about how they will raise their children. They make a determined effort to reduce the risks to that child while still allowing it to explore its environment and make all the wonderful discoveries of a child. Most parents consider how they will educate their children; what schools they will go to, what career they will choose. Most parents consider character education vital; building resilience, kindness, courage, honesty, empathy and thankfulness. Have we considered what we want to build in our faith? Perhaps love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control might be a good start! But how are we going to do this?