Let us not fool ourselves

Do you ever find yourself in the middle of the rat-race, saying, "I'm doing it for my kids?"  I'm doing it to provide for their educations, to provide a home, to make sure they have great opportunities?  I found myself going there this week and it's a place I tell myself not to go.  

I like what I do.  Most of the time, I even love what I do.  But there are days that I, like all of you, just downright hate it.  I get caught up in the motions of work and can't remember why I'm doing it and start feeling like that poor gerbil trapped on a wheel.  Yesterday, I was even talking with a friend about it and said that if it weren't for my kids' educations ahead, I just might hang it all up and open that snack bar in the Caribbean.  [Actually, I'd probably start up some kind of homeless mission but you get the point - I'd be flat broke.]  He asked me if I thought my kids would be less happy that way and pointed out the fact that he had very little money as a child but never noticed.  Exactly.  Because our kids, rightfully, care more about being happy and loved than about going on extravagant vacations or spreading out across 4000 square feet of real estate; and they certainly don't spend 18 years of their lives worrying about how to fund the 4 to 8 they'll spend in college.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need to be very careful to not put our kids in the middle of this.  They simply want and deserve happy parents.  Sure, we're all going to have a bad day once in a while, but if you find yourself coming home unable to give yourself to your family because you've slaved for them all day long, you need to ask yourself if it's really worth the price you're all paying for admission.   As Isaiah 29:11-13 says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Your kids want the kind of prosperity that comes in this verse, not the kind provided by a job.  Are you prospering?