Have been considering the following weighty words from Socrates (469 BC);
"If I could get to the highest place in Athens, I would lift up my voice and say, 'What mean ye fellow citizens that you turn every stone to scrape wealth together and take so little care of your children, to whom you must one day relinquish it all?'"
When I hear the statistic that 3 out of 5 churched kids in America abandon the church and wander in religious limbo after leaving home, I am shaken to the core. What is going wrong? It makes me all the more passionate about "training up our children in the way they should go". I think there's a reason that the bible says; talk about these things and impress them on your children's hearts when you rise, when you sit, when you walk along the path, when you lay down." The reason being, it's a full time job.
I Thank God for the many parents in these days who are being called according to His purpose to be there, be active, be purposeful in the training up their children, it rejoices my heart. May we see a turn-around in that sad 3/5 statistic in the lives of the next generation.
On a personal level, it amazes me that despite conscious choice and effort to be a family that is present when "they rise, when they walk, when they sit, when they lay down"; A family that "stays, plays and prays" together in all the different facets of life, I still feel the moments slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass. My "baby" will soon be 9... The math magically writes itself out on the whiteboard of my brain, 9 X 2=18, equating to half-way gone. My heart feels a nostalgic and near painful squeeze. No! I'm not ready! My darling husband just smiles and shakes his head at me... my daughter quizzically asks; "but do I have to leave when I'm 18?" I smile. "No, sweetheart... you surely don't!" Words that melt a mother's heart.
Whatever I am, whatever I do, whatever happens to me, I pray I will leave behind a legacy of Faith, Hope and Love in the lives of these little lambs who follow in my shadow, that I will lead them by being an example in word, faith and deed.
"It was a sheep- not a lamb, that strayed
In the parable Jesus told:
A grown up sheep that had gone away
from the ninety and nine in the fold.
Out in the meadows, out in the cold,
'Twas a sheep the good shepherd sought:
Back to the flock, and into the fold,
'Twas a sheep the Good Shepherd brought.
And why, for the sheep, should we earnestly long
And so earnestly hope and pray?
Because there is danger if they go wrong;
They will lead the young lambs astray.
For the lambs will follow the sheep, you know
Wherever the sheep may stray
If the sheep go wrong, it will not be long
'Til the lambs are as wrong as they.
So with the sheep we earnestly plead,
For the sake of the lambs today:
If the lambs are lost, what a terrible cost
Some sheep may have to pay.
Author unknown.
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