Every profession has its accreditation process, its prescribed standards and its carefully defined measures of competence.

Parenting, I have discovered, is no exception. 

Among the core competencies is the ability to shepherd small children through the morning rush.  

In the homes of Highly Accomplished Parents, the morning routine operates with the efficiency of a Swiss watch.   

Clothes laid out the night before.

Lunchboxes packed.

Who needs a sticker chart? 

Their children have internalised the routine, absorbed the virtues of personal responsibility, and are well on their way to becoming well-adjusted human beings.

Teeth brushed.

Hair combed.

Quietly reading.

I understand these households exist.

Presumably their children were consulted before conception and agreed to the terms.

I am still working towards Professional Proficiency.  

One morning, 2 days before my daughter’s second birthday, all it took was the tragic combination of a slightly worn ballet flat, a patch of water on the bathroom tiles, and gravity.

(Gravity was the only one performing to standard)

In 2023, I sustained a displaced transverse fracture of my left patella — my kneecap. 

Ambulance, green whistle, surgery, six weeks of a hinged knee brace and total immobilisation. 

With a six-year-old and a two-year-old in the house, this was less a medical recommendation than an exercise in creative impossibility.

At the time, we lived on the waterfront at Arcadia Vale, overlooking Lake Macquarie. From the kitchen, living room and bedroom windows, I had an uninterrupted 180-degree view across the lake, where yachts rested at their moorings near the boat club.

 During those weeks, the lake became something like a picture book through my window. I spent hours watching it, trying to read the world like a metaphor.

What stayed with me most was the way the boats behaved in the wind.

A boat at anchor does not turn away from the wind. It swings to face it. The sails may fill and the rigging strain, but the anchor gives the vessel the strength to hold its position. There is something dauntless in that posture: it does not escape the wind; it faces the forces against it. 

That is how I understand the authority of the Bible. I believe Scripture is the timeless, inspired Word of God. Its authority comes from God, not from the approval of the culture reading it. Cultures rise and fall like tides, and the winds of each age press hard in different directions, but Scripture holds fast. It gives us a fixed point beyond ourselves by which we can know what is true.

Its relevance is just as enduring. The human heart has not changed greatly. We still wrestle with fear, pride, grief, longing, love, justice and hope. Scripture speaks into these things because it reveals both who God is and who we are in Him. David before Goliath captures something of this. He did not need the armour or trappings of the age around him. He needed to know his God and to know where his confidence belonged.

For me, Scripture is not merely an anchor we hold onto. We are anchored in Christ, and through the Holy Spirit the words of Scripture become living and present to us. He gives discernment, quickens the Word within us, and brings its truth to bear on the circumstances before us.

The Bible is authoritative and relevant. It gives us truth that does not move and, through the Holy Spirit, wisdom for the moment. When the world blows like a gale, we do not need to be swept along by every current. Anchored in Christ, we simply remain.