My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion; they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck. Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble. Proverbs 3:21-23
When my time is up here on the earth, I hope to have passed down some wisdom to my children. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I sure want to learn more each day. If I’m continuing to learn, then I can teach. If I have valuable information to teach, they can grow. The more they grow, the better prepared they are for life.
They can choose to ignore what I’ve told them, but at least I’ll know I did what I could. It would be one of my biggest regrets to have knowledge inside of me that could’ve helped them that I never bothered passing on. Yes, everyone definitely needs to learn through experience, but we can’t ever use that excuse to keep silent now. Even if we feel like our youth aren’t hearing, it just might come back to them when they need it most.
A piece of wisdom that was taught to me that I’ve passed on to my boys has to do with pointing out others’ faults. Sometimes our flesh so badly wants to talk about what all someone has been doing wrong, how they hurt us, and what we can’t believe they said. We would do just about anything to let it come out of our mouths even when we absolutely know that we shouldn’t. I’ve told the boys that when we’re pointing out all those negatives of someone, we have three fingers pointing back at ourselves.
We were sitting at the dinner table tonight discussing our day when my youngest just knew he shouldn’t say what he wanted to, but decided he’d get creative so he could satisfy his flesh. Let me tell you, his mind had to have been was working at warp speed.
As soon as a certain topic was brought up he started by saying, “I’m not going to point one finger.” I was thrilled! He remembered the lesson that he was taught quite a while ago. Then, he continued without missing a beat saying, “Someone…” as he was getting it all out, he was looking at his brother with ALL fingers pointed right at him. He didn’t want us telling him to look at the three pointing back at him! We lost it…we laughed so hard and even his brother couldn’t get mad. It was so funny, but that isn’t how it works!
The next time you think that children don’t hear what you’re saying, realize that they really do. Just like with us, it might take some time to see results in what we’re doing, but I’m confident that it will happen. It’ll help our children go on their way in safety and not stumble. Don’t give up!
