Every parent who has children approaching or into the early teenage years knows that the day of reckoning is coming. The day of which I speak, of course, is the day when the once compliant, cooperative little girl or boy becomes the defiant young adult. Many a parent among us waits with bated breath for the day to arrive. Not a few of us wonder how we are going to handle those times when our desire to care for and love our children openly clashes with our children’s quest for a separate identity from us and their search for independence. It is curious that the whole topic of childrearing and surviving the middle and late adolescent years of our children should intersect with our first lesson today.

The picture of our God which we see in this lesson is the picture of a God trying to be the…