I’ve had way too many heated “conversations� with parents as a youth pastor in the past about their approach to caring for their children. In their eyes, it’s care. In mine, it’s control. For the life of me, I just couldn’t understand how they failed to see this. That is, until I had my own daughter. I can see why we do our best to control the situation for our children safety. As a baby, they do need it. And love is genuinely our motivations, until I began to do some more soul searching on my part. I noticed that a lot of what I did in the act of caring was driven a lot more by my own fears rather than love. I obviously tell my daughter not to climb something because I don’t want her to get hurt. However, I don’t want her to get hurt because of the pain that it will cause me as well. Do I tell her not to run in church because of the dirty looks that SHE’LL get? Or is it done more out of fear from the dirty looks that her parents will get? I think it’s much more the latter. How does God do it? I mean, it would be so much easier (maybe for us too) if He “controlled� us the way that we try to control our own children. But then again, that really wouldn’t be love would it? To me, God’s act of giving His children the freedom to make their own decisions exemplifies one the greatest forms of leadership to embrace as a parent as well as a shepherd of our church. My missionary aunt told me one day that when she releases her flock, she does not simply release them into the wild. She releases them into the hands of God. That sure looks like caring to me.