Children have a right to know what their parents believe is worth living for. And dying for. Parents are committed to telling them.
It's not as though parents always know what is worth dying for. God knows, we give our children a lot of wrongheaded notions. But if we do not tell our children what we believe matters most of all, we tell them that nothing in life matters much more than anything else.
We are talking about character here, for one thing, about being a good person, not looking good, not feeling good, but being good, which is something else again. Character is about being a person who can spot the difference between honesty and hype even when experts tell us a lie for a good cause. It is about being a person who can smell a seduction for what it is even when it comes as an offer nobody could refuse. It is about being a person who has a feel for when something is wrong even when it's legal. And above all, it is about being a person who knows what the real difference is between loving people and using people.
Where the nuts and bolts of right and wrong fall into place inside the complicated issues that bedevil modern times is really not all that important here; we will forever dispute about them.
What counts most is character, becoming a person with an ingrained sense for what is fair and what is helpful in the ways people treat each other.
Let us say that a child asks whether she is permitted to do this or that. The parent says "NO." The child asks, "Why not?." The parent says, "Because it isn't right." That's all. Explanations can come later. So can the arguments. Repeat the theme in any of its boundless variations, and the child will get to know one thing for sure: her parents believe that being right is more important than being rich, and that doing right is all about being the sort of person other people can count on to keep some decency and fairness and kindness alive in a world where, when people are not good, life goes to the dogs.
That being settled, a child is free to go on to write her own story, but whatever her story turns out to be, it will have a thread of decency and fairness that will tie together the loose pieces of the plot.
We are also talking about faith, about our restless heart seeking its peace with a personal power of love beyond what anybody can manage on earth. Everybody believes in something. Our children have a right to know what we believe and every parent is committed to telling them.
Before we put fork to plate at any meal in the house, we folded our hands, closed our eyes, bowed our heads, and say: Lord bless this food, Amen.
It is our daily practise, that really matters to all of us.
We were being given the raw material for our story, we were learning who we were; and however our stories would end one day, they would have to come to terms with every meal time when we put our scrawny heads down to pray.
My mother believed that her life and ours were nestled in the unseen arms of the Lord, that every good thing in life came from him, that whatever we took from him needed his Blessing it it was going to do us any real good, and that we should be ever thankful for whatever gifts his tender mercies assigned to us. What matters was that it was not only what she believed in her own private soul, but what her family believed before her, to the third and fourth generation, the family in whose line we located our being. What mattered is that in those prayers we were learning who we were, where we came from, and where we were going.
Let's have a coffee
Hari
Enjoy reading...Blessing
Nice one bro