10 - Parenting
Proverbs 19
18. Discipline your son in his early years while there is hope.
If you don't you will ruin his life.
LB
Recently on one of the social networking web sites, there was a video which was voted most popular by its viewers.
It portrayed a young father trying to buy groceries while his little son put on the mother of all tantrums.
What stunned me was that the father just stood passively by, allowing the little boy to continue displaying his temper tantrum, and he did nothing to correct the child at all.
The impression given was that fathers just allow children to behave like this, and there's nothing fathers should or could do about it.
But the real shocker was at the end of the video. It said something like, "You should have used a condom"!
That sickened me at a very deep level, because it was saying that the child was just an unfortunate accident, and all the trouble of moulding this young life could have been "so easily" avoided in the first place, if the father hadn't been so "stupid".
It is such a distressing commentary on parenthood!
Shaping a young, promising life should be viewed as an active, engaging challenge, especially by a young father: not regret over not using birth control!
There is a comment in the Bible about King David which is instructive here:
1 Kings 1:
5 About that time David's son Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, began boasting, "I will make myself king." So he provided himself with chariots and charioteers and recruited fifty men to run in front of him.
6 Now his father, King David, had never disciplined him at any time, even by asking, "Why are you doing that?" Adonijah had been born next after Absalom, and he was very handsome.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
Adonijah's attempt at making himself king ended in his violent death.
However, one reason he didn't understand that one doesn't set about to make oneself king, is because his father never corrected him or disciplined him at any time.
King David bahaved like the modern passive father in the grocery. He looked on at all the childhood tantrums and did nothing to discipline Adonijah whatsoever.
O that fathers would take up the challenge of parenting actively and joyfully, especially when their children are young, and not just stand by passively allowing their child to head towards destruction!
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, today I ask that You give me the strength and fortitude to parent my children with joy and wisdom.
Teach me how to be actively engaged in their lives, so that they have every opportunity to turn out wise, and not foolish,
in Jesus' name,
Amen.
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