Teach Your Children Well

And Another Thing . . . The Next Generation

My daughter is getting married in April, so this blog entry may be a bit maudlin.  She is sitting in front of me right now addressing her wedding invitations. And somehow I keep hearing the voice of Tevye from “The Fiddler on the Roof” singing in my head, “Sunrise, Sunset, swiftly flow the days.”  The cliché of life passing quickly is a cliché because it is something all of us experience if we live long enough. The days of children at our feet seem eternal while we’re in the midst of them, but when they are gone it seems they lasted only a moment. I believe this is why the Bible is constantly telling us to teach our children. God knows the moments that feel like they will last forever are gone before we know it. God’s message for parents is (Deut 11),

¹⁸ Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

The lessons our children learn while they are with us, will be carried with them long after we have finished our days on earth. Proverbs 22:⁶ Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it. The things we are told when we are little stick with us, shaping our decisions and choices. Perspectives absorbed with ease when we are young, are hard to shake when we are old. If we learn bad things, it takes time and therapy and whole lot of grace to exorcise those demons. If we learn the truths of God, they will be a magnet forever calling us home.

This is why we teach the stories of God to the children of The Gathering. Bible stories have been shaping people’s lives forever. And in every culture in which they have been translated and told, people change. When we tell them to our children, they change as well. The sad thing is that a lot of us don’t know the stories ourselves. So I want The Gathering to be a place where we tell these stories to our children and to one another. The stories of God are the software the Holy Spirit uses to speak to us in the day-to-day moments of our lives. This is why God instructs Moses to have people tie them on their foreheads.

After my daughter walks down the aisle and starts her marriage journey, at some point along the way, she and her husband may be blessed with children. If so, she will begin to pour into her kids the things Kim and I have poured into her. God is the Father: the parent of us all.  He loves each of his children in each generation. My dad told me that he believed the key verse of the Bible was Psalm 100:5 which says, “For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” I think he was exactly right.

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now!