Every boy and girl in our modern age has to grow up in one household or another and we wonder at the quality of the early years of some of them.
But kids have the benefit of not really knowing anything other than the atmosphere in which their time growing up is spent and so, they think it is normal. You or I might think otherwise, but that could make us judgmental busybodies.
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As long as there is love in the home, all will be well. A bit of praise from parents can go a long way, but too much leaves a child, ironically, dependent on it, like a drug. If there is even a small gap in time when there is no praise, a kid can think the love has disappeared. What isn’t needed is criticism. The word “no” is not criticism and hopefully a child has at least parent who knows how to say that word. There is not much good than can be said about criticism. Kids rarely accept it in whatever spirit it is given. Too often, it feels like rejection. Sometimes that is what it is. Helpful suggestions, on the other hand, can be, well, helpful.
But if a child in 2019 has the following amenities in his or her home growing up, they’re doing not too badly.
- A warm house. “Central” heating has not been around all that long, less than a hundred years. Before that, there was a woodstove in the kitchen. When the fire went out at night, that was it till morning. My Dad used to take a glass of water to bed and put it on his bedside table. There would be a layer of ice on it by morning.
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A safe house. Fire extinguishers. Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Exit plans rehearsed. I can take you to a rural cemetery near my home where there is a stone with nine names on it. All the birth dates differ. All the death dates are the same. Candles in the windows. A Christmas eve fire in the late 1800s.
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Running water. Easily taken for granted but also a relatively new feature of homes. It has been said that the invention of the indoor toilet has contributed more to the health of modern human beings than any other advancement.
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People grew up happy and healthy before all our modern conveniences, but good food, shelter and clothing are still the staples.
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A healthy community. Children are never raised by their parents alone. After the first couple of years, they begin to be influenced by an ever-growing number of other people and it might even be argued that the community ends up with the larger share of the child raising. Doctors, nurses, teachers, coaches, cousins, friends, families of friends, employers, church members, guides and scouts leaders, aunts, uncles, even brother and sisters. Grandparents. This wider mentorship explains how a child can be orphaned (a brother and sister I knew in high school lost both their parents in a car accident) and still have a happy life and grow up healthy.
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Traditions. They serve as the guardrails over the bridges in life that keep us from flying off the roads into the rivers. It almost doesn’t matter where they come from – religion, family history, national culture – but the best ones are the small ones a family comes up with on their own. The worst ones are rigid and imposed harshly from the outside world. Children need to be able to resist, even break with, traditions without facing ejection from the tribe. What was should never be the enemy of what is or what will be. All humans have their own guiding lights they are following.
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If we love our children, we will get it right. If children know they are loved, they will never go wrong. And in spite of the circumstances they might grow up surrounded by, they will have had a happy childhood and a good upbringing.
So ends today’s sermon. The ushers will now bring around the collection plates.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
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