Change Your Stars

You know those movies that you can watch over and over again? When you’re surfing the channels and it comes up you tend to linger and stay and watch the rest of it.  One such movie for me is A Knight’s Tale. A peasant thatcher sends his son away to be a servant to a knight.  In so doing, he tells his son to learn from him and that he can become something more than a peasant.  “Change your stars,” he says to him. Through circumstances, deception (not advocated), courage,, and support, that boy becomes a knight. He returns home and the father asks, “Has my boy come home? Has he changed his stars?” He had. The generational line of peasantry had been broken.  They are now nobility. The last time I saw this movie, I thought of Exodus 20:5 which talks about God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.” Generational sin. Generational patterns. Generational peasantry. Generational parenting. What do we do if we find ourself in a generational parenting trap? Or maybe a generational parenting void?  I have no intention of picking on our parents. Grace doesn’t do that.  Grace moves forward. It doesn’t live in the past. My kids will have plenty to improve on by the grace of God. What I am saying is that as people, it is so easy to do what we saw, especially when we spent 18 years learning it.  It becomes ingrained. Things like yelling to correct. Treating everyone the same. High control. No control. Over protection. Guilt. Excessive corporal punishment. So what do we do if we find ourself here? Change our stars. Or rather, let God change our stars. When we become a Christian, we are of spiritual noble birth.  A son or a daughter of the King.  New access. New position. New life. New patterns.  Hebrews 4:16 tells us, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” God’s grace changes our stars.  God’s grace can change our family’s stars. “God, in His grace, values us, frees us, empowers us, and aims us at true greatness,” says Tim Kimmel.  We can treat our families the same way.  We don’t have to wait.  It’s not too late even if you have teenagers or even adult children.  With God’s grace, you can’t lose. So, by God’s grace, let’s change our stars.