A child shows the way

As a parent, I see the difficulty that so many children of all ages are having growing up in our American society today. There are pressures that I couldn't have imagined when I was in that age group years ago. Media influences, peer pressure, social media. political correctness, and other outside pressures put them under a microscope that didn't exist when I was a child.

So how do we teach our children to respond to all this pressure? I think that a vignette from the gospel of Luke shows us a beginning. Luke tells the story of Jesus' trip to the Temple with His parents. They went for the annual celebration of the Passover, as required by the Law. Since Jesus was 12 years old, this would have been the first year He was required to make the trip as a man, although He probably had done it before. They probably stayed for the week of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, then began to travel back to their home.

His parents had traveled for a day before they realized Jesus wasn't with them. This sounds shocking to us, but Luke tells us they thought Jesus was with some of their relatives and friends, which would have been a fairly common practice of that time. Maybe someone else had offered to look after Jesus, or to have Him travel with other children His own age. We don't know who was supposed to be watching out for Him, but in the end it was His mother and father who made the trip back, frantically looking for their son.

They found Him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers of the Law, listening and asking them questions. He was also providing them with some astonishingly insightful answers. When questioned by Mary, He simply replied, "Didn't you know I had to be in My Father's house?" (Luke 2:49). Jesus as a child wanted to learn more about His Father and about the Word of God.

How does this apply to children today? I don't think any of us think our child is the moral and spiritual equivalent of Jesus. (I don't think any of us think we ourselves are either, for that matter.) Still, the interest Jesus showed in learning from the Word and in understanding how He should live in the presence of HIs Father is something we should seek to instill in our children. The best way to avoid the pressures of the world is to understand the truth of God's Word and to apply that truth to our lives.

I recently sat in on a class with some children who spoke of how they were picked on at school. I could tell from their words and expressions that this was an unpleasant part of their lives. When asked how they dealt with it, they responded with some typical answers like punching the person or insulting them back, only to say then that while that's what they would like to do, they knew that they shouldn't respond that way. I think those children have started to really take in and live out the teaching of the Word.

I'm not saying that this is easy for children, or even for adults. What I am saying is that this is where we have to start. We cannot resist the call of the world if we don't hear the call of Christ louder. We can't hear Christ call if we don't spend time taking in His Word, through reading, meditation, and teaching. Jesus had to spend that time when He was here on earth; why would we think we don't? Let's help our children learn that lesson, and continue to take it in for ourselves.