Pride of the Parent.

Colossians 3:23 (NIV)

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.

You will always get a group of parents at a prize-giving or at school sports. And, if they were honest, they would tell you that they have really only come to see one figure walk on to the platform to receive the prize, certificate or diploma. They have only come to see one figure flash past in the race. They will politely applaud the others, but it is only one - their one - that they came to see. And if you think that there is something wrong with that, you are not a parent. Anything our own children do or achieve has a hundred times the thrill that something that someone else's child has done.

Thomas Campbell was a famous poet; his father was a simple man who seldom read a book in his life. His famous son used to send him the volumes of his poems as they came off the press. One day someone came upon the old man standing with one of his son's volumes in his hand. He was looking at it and saying, 'To think that Tom made that!' It was Tom's book, and Tom's father was thrilled and proud.

Has it ever struck you that God is like that - about you? God is our Father and we are His children, and all the time God looks down and watches what we do. It isn't that He is watching in a critical way, ready to pounce or condemn. He is watching as a parent watches his child, and when we do well it makes Him glad, and when we do badly, it makes Him sad. It is surely the most tremendous responsibility in human life that we, being as we are, can bring joy or sorrow to God.

On one occasion someone came on Robert Louis Stevenson turning over the pages of a scrapbook of press cuttings about his own books. 'Well,' said the friend 'is fame all that it's cracked up to be?' 'Yes,' said Stevenson, 'when I see my mother's face.' His mother's joy in his success was dearer to him than all his fame with others.

As Saint Augustine said long ago, 'God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love.' And, therefore, each one of us has it in us to bring pride or grief, joy or sorrow, to God.

That is, indeed, something to live for.

Dear Lord, we pray that today we would bring You pride in what we do. Help what we do bring joy to You and to those around us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.