Parenting is more like farming than cooking. Good meals can be prepared in a couple of hours. And by following a recipe, you can be fairly certain of the outcome. But formulas don’t work very well with children.

To get a model for childrearing, you need to track the bread and beef all the way back to the farm where they came from. Now you’re closer to parenting. Parenting is far more “barnyard and back 40” than sugar and spice. Parenting is plowing and digging and raking and planting. It’s weeding and cultivating and irrigating, and then waiting on the heavens until harvest time. Depending on the year, you might have a bumper crop. Other harvests could be wiped out by bugs, or disease, or too much rain, or not enough rain, or too much heat, or too much
cold.

That’s not to say that farming is just a game of chance. Farming can be very scientific. Put a loafer or a playboy on the farm and you’re almost sure of being hungry in the fall. A good farmer is a hard worker who knows what to do with the specific crops or animals he’s raising. He doesn’t raise chickens like turkeys, nor corn like alfalfa. Above all, you don’t see him trying quick-recipe formulas with a “sure thing, can’t miss” attitude. A good farmer is a humble man. He knows his cash crop, but he doesn’t presume upon the outcome. All he knows is what his responsibility is at each step of the way. If he gets a bumper crop, it’s because he did the right things that were under his control, and also because the things that weren’t under his control fell
in line.

The apostle Paul alluded to this farming model in his first New Testament letter to the Corinthians:

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase…. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor…. And we labor, working with our own hands…. as my beloved children I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me (3:5-6,8; 4:12,14-16).

Paul was thinking of spiritual parenting, which is different from raising your own children. But there are strong parallels. In both cases you must do the right thing, work hard, wait on God for the harvest, and realize that you will be rewarded— not for the results but for the loving nurturing you have given.

Peace of mind is found not in trying to force quick growth but in realizing that parenting is a long process of providing what our little ones need, while waiting on them and God for the results. There is no peace or productivity in trying to speed up the harvest.