07th Jul 2008
Teaching Our Children
Today I’m thinking about a little girl I knew a few years ago. I will call her Reann. She was the daughter of a school friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in many years. I met Reann, along with her younger siblings when my husband and I taught Sunday School in a district within the Bridgetown area.
Over the next few years Reann would’ve experienced a few pregnancies and a few abortions. By age fourteen, she found herself in a doctor’s office having yet another abortion, tragically, the doctor was unable to stop the bleeding and Reann died on the doctor’s table.
I couldn’t help but think that if she had someone to constantly tell her and show her that Jesus loved her, things could have turned out differently. Yes, Reann was having sex, but she was still a child and she was still innocent to a lot of things.
On thinking about Reann, I am also reminded of another little girl. Kelly was seven years old and she was a victim of cancer, but oh, what faith she had ! her story touched my soul. Her parents were christians and Kelly knew the love of Jesus. During her illness, she kept a diary and she talked with Jesus and wrote her feelings down. What really touched me was a little while before she died she dreamt that she was having dinner with Jesus. She said she didn’t remember seeing any food on the table but Jesus was there at that table with her, she died a few weeks later.
Kelly knew Jesus because of her parent’s nurturing, Reann knew about Jesus because she would have heard about him in Sunday School, but what a difference in the two lives….
Its sad and tragic when children have no one to steer them in the right direction or pray with them and for them….or to tell them that Jesus loves and cares about them. Sadly, Reann’s mother was not a believer and her life was somewhat similiar to Reann’s as she got pregnant with Reann when she herself was a teenager.
*In many scriptures in the Bible, great emphasis is placed on the importance of teaching our children about God and his ways. *We are commanded not only to observe God’s law which he himself had taught us as a good father should, but we are to teach them to our children as well, and they in turn are to teach them to their children so that the generations to come will know God and walk in his ways. We are instructed to teach them when they arise on mornings, when they walk along the road and when they go to bed at night. We tell them when we walk them to school, when we read to them at night, and use every opportunity to apply Jesus to their every day living.
God had always intended that we would be a people with certain characteristics, a people belonging to him, and this can only be accomplished if his laws and ways are passed down through each generation as a legacy.
Teaching our children about Jesus Christ from a very early age is vital to their survival especially in a world that is trying to stamp out the very idea of God. As parents and guardians, we ourselves must first learn from our heavenly father and then teach our children, remember *children are a heritage and a reward from God and we need to do our part so that they will have healthy productive lives, they are God’s gifts and a sign of his favor.
*Deut 4 :9 ; 6 : 6-7
* Psalms 78 : 5-8
* Psalms 27 : 3
Written By Linda Herbert
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