“Parents bring up their children to be colonists at the proper time, planting families of their own. Consequently, each family is designed to be a culture — with a language, customs, traditions, and countless unspoken assumptions. God has made the world in such a way that children who grow up in the culture of the family are to be shaped and molded by it.” — Douglas Wilson, Standing on the Promises
Parents prepare the colonists of the future. The future will be inhabited by someone doing something and parents provide the citizens and the culture that will live there. The future is a foreign land. It is uncivilized and in need of Christ. It is a mission field. It's culture will be inherited by those we bring up in our homes. It's customs and traditions will be our daily routines. It's vernacular will be based on what we are saying to our children today.
"We (must) finally recognize the importance of the time we are called to invest in our children. Because it is a long war, it crosses generations. In a very short space of time, your children will join you in the line, and a short time after that, their children will join them. This means that we begin by fighting for our children, but we must end by fighting by means of them. We must do two things simultaneously—we must fight today’s battles, and we must recruit and train tomorrow’s warriors." — Douglas Wilson, The Neglected Qualification
The future is a battlefield. Christendom is not the only one laying claim to tomorrow. The enemy knows that the beachheads are all around the corner as well. We fight for our children in order to fight along side them in order to fight through them and their children when we enter into eternity. So, we must fight now in order to have a future and we must train and raise up tomorrow's soldiers while they're still sleeping across the hall.
The future is Christian. It's colonists are cooing in our nurseries. Let us rise to the occasion and make them our mission field in order that they may join the meek who inherit the earth.
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