What do you write about on a day when you have challenged yourself to write and nothing much has happened on that particular day? Write about something that has long been on your mind and never found the time to!
Bringing up children in the ways of the Lord is not an easy task. Sin is in them. They know how to read our moods. They know how to use papa’s absence, mama’s time of meal preparation, grandparent’s visit, authority’s absence etc., they almost always want to push the limits to see how much of it can go unnoticed, unpunished – under the radar!
To add to this, is the problem that I see persistent in today’s world – Who are you to correct or say anything to my child? The child seems to be sided by the parent not because he/she is right but for the only reason that they don’t want to anyone else to point their finger at their child. Taking this one step further, it is more like – Do you think I cannot parent well? The underlying cause of this is ego. We don’t want others to correct our children simply because we think that they feel that we have not parented well.
This is not only found outside but also inside the church. We need to understand that children have the sinful nature in them and that causes them to try and hide from parents and authorities when they do wrong. Our job is to help them see the sinful nature and with God’s help teach them how to repent and deal with it. It is the desire of the every parent that the children obey God and follow his statures but more often than not, this is not the case and we are called to be discipline the child for the good of the child’s soul!
Not always are we able to find ourselves with our children,monitoring their every moves to help them deal with Sin. I long for that day when bringing up a child in a Godly manner is a community project and not a particular parent’s job alone. The children under such circumstances know that they will fall under radar of not only their parents but also the community that they belong to and hence cannot just escape because they were not caught by their father or mother but by a church member!
This means a lot of different things I hope to expound on what this community is and what this community project looks like tomorrow!
