"Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it." Prov. 22:6
"I wonder what we'll do with him for the next eighteen years?"
Charlie uttered these words as he looked down at our firstborn son wrapped tightly in his little blue blanket. We had just come home from the hospital and my husband and my mother and I were all gazing devotedly at our tiny new baby sleeping quietly in the bed.
Mom looked at Charlie incredulously and said, "Well, it will be a lot longer than eighteen years. It will be all of your life!"
Neither he nor I had been raised around babies. We didn't have a clue. We both stared at her blankly and wondered what we should do next. We didn't have to ponder long. Twenty four hours later, our morning delight had changed to late evening weariness. Ethan's brand new little outfits were in the wash, I was sore all over, and his diaper needed changing - again. There were three of us attending this little son and we were exhausted. One seven pound baby had turned our lives upside down. " All of our lives" seemed like a very long time.
Six weeks later, we novices were experts on this little fellow......
We knew his eating schedule and we recognized his different cries - "I am hungry, I'm uncomfortable, I need attention!" We could rock him just the way he liked to help him fall asleep. Our newly learned parenting prowess was exciting and satisfying. It's amazing to me that God gives young parents this ability to go from being clueless about babies to becoming uniquely knowledgeable about their own little child's physical needs very quickly.
Meeting our little one's physical needs was tiring but not that difficult. The true challenge was investing in his emotional and spiritual needs "training him up in the way that he should go." The word "train' doesn't mean a choo-choo. We learned that in the Bible the word, "train," has three ideas: dedication, instruction, and motivation.
First of all, we are to dedicate our child to God, recognizing that he is a gift that God has entrusted to us. Our dedication is an action that reflects our understanding that he belongs exclusively to God and we are to raise him as good stewards of this gift.
Secondly, we parents are to instruct our children in the ways of the Lord. We are to teach them how to please God. They are to study and learn and memorize His Word. It is our responsibility to place them under the influence of Godly people who will lovingly instruct them in His ways.
Thirdly, in Jewish writings, this word "train" means motivate. The meaning of this word in Arabic is likened to the action of a midwife who stimulates the palate of a newborn infant with dates or crushed grapes so that it will start sucking. Parents are to stimulate a taste within their child so that he is motivated in his heart to follow God, not by compelling him externally but by creating an inner desire for the Lord.
"Train up a child in the way he should go." Who are we to train up? A child. The word means "dependent" and as long as a child is dependent on his parents, he is to be the recipient of dedication, instruction, and motivation. There are many stages in a child's life and we are to do this throughout each stage.
If we do this, "when he is old, he will not depart from it" the proverb assures us. Old has the connotation of "when he is not dependent." As parents, we are to do the best that we can to dedicate, instruct and motivate our children while they are dependents. Then we are to rest in the last words of this beautiful exhortation trusting that God will bring it to pass in His way and in His time.
This son is a pastor in Alaska now. He and his family were here for the reunion. As he led our Sunday morning family service, it brought us great joy to sit under his wise teaching of God's Word. I looked at Charlie who was listening intently. and remembered, "What do you do with him for the next eighteen years?" We had learned, parenting lasts a lot longer - not eighteen years but for a lifetime. Christian parenting always involves dedicating, instructing and motivating and most of all trusting that "when they are old, they will not depart from it."
