Food for Friday
And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
Parents in a school district in Florida sued the school board because their son, after receiving his graduation certificate, was unable to read it. Their lawsuit speaks volumes about the quality of education – or lack of education – that the school district offered. It is almost unbelievable that they could do such a poor job. But it speaks even greater volumes about the lack of interest on the part of the parents, to have their child go through twelve years of schooling without learning anything, and without them realizing that he wasn’t learning anything. Where were they during those dozen years? Those of us with children find it amazing that any parents could be so detatched from their children’s lives! They certainly didn’t deserve the title of parents. And how different they were from the parents Paul in today’s text encourages the Ephesians to be!
We let the term ‘nurture and admonition’ roll off our tongues easily enough, but do we actually know what it means? Does it refer to more than just bringing up our children in a home where they don’t hear bad language, and where they are required to learn their memory verses before going to Sunday school? This expression contains the thoughts of discipline and proper teaching. In a world that rejects the concept of discipline and in school systems that refuse to teach moral values, our children are not going to receive discipline or proper teaching unless they receive it from their parents. We can’t rely on anybody else to provide them with what they truly need.
Children need discipline to prepare then for life. Children who are never corrected when wrong or chastised when necessary fail to learn that there are consequences for wrong behaviour. As adults, they will live in constant frustration and disappointment as life throws its bitter consequences at them. As sinners, they will never realize the need to flee from the wrath to come. It is a tragic wrong to leave our children undisciplined.
The school systems, and society in general, will be glad to teach our children that they descended from primordial slime, frogs, and apes. They will also gladly warp our children’s minds into believing homosexuality and moral impurity are normal and acceptable. A half hour a week in Sunday school is not enough; our children need daily instruction and example in the truth of the Word of God. They need to be trained and instructed and shown what is right before God or they will be no better than the hordes of godless drones that they are growing up amongst.
The very best we can do for our children is to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. In doing so, we give them the best opportunity for this life and the next. – Jim MacIntosh