LEFT TO HIMSELF
Proverbs 29:15-17
The need for a child to be properly brought up is seen all through the book of Proverbs. As a parent, you should rise up to this responsibility and see to it that your children are not left to themselves. You should be concerned about EVERYTHING that concerns them – the friends they keep, the TV programmes they watch; their spiritual growth. These children need our attention, guidance, and care.
The saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” cannot be more apt for this generation. Even Proverbs 13:24 affirms it. When you spare the rod, you do not only spoil your child, it is to your own detriment and shame in the future. Training children is therefore a win-win situation: both the parents and children benefit.
All children are born with a default mechanism to foolishness (Proverbs 22:15). Leaving them to themselves would introduce a lot of vices into their lives through friends and the media as they will follow their own will without restraints. They must be properly guided, corrected and disciplined by way of reproofs and punishments, so they will learn wisdom and be successful. Reproof represents reprimands and warnings against wrong behaviour while the rod is for physical punishment, to reinforce the verbal reproof. It is often said that a parent who does not want his child to cry while young will cry for and with that child in his old age.
Parents should not shift the responsibility for caring and raising of their children to other people. Government, schools, counselors, doctors or the Church can only help. The responsibility belongs to parents. They should never be left to themselves.
MEDITATION: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
