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Abstract

You’ve got eighteen years. That’s about it. When we first have children it seems as though we’ve got our whole lives ahead of us as a new family. But as they grow older, we begin to realize that our time with our children is indeed limited. When all is said and done, we only have about eighteen years to raise our children—and then they’re gone. A great deal of faith is required to yield our children to the Lord when our every instinct drives us to protect them. An even more biblical perspective is that they’re never really "ours" to begin with—but are only on loan from God to raise for His glory. How much more was this true of Jesus. According to Simeon, a man to whom God promised an audience with the coming King, Jesus would not only be rejected when He grew up, but would disclose the true condition of men’s hearts. According to Anna, a devout woman who lived at the temple, Jesus would grow up to become God’s instrument of redemption. Mary and Joseph learned these lessons when they presented Jesus at the temple, and their faith was strengthened.