Category: Parenting

“Fathers and mothers, how stands your record? Have you been faithful to your trust? As you have seen your children inclined to follow a course that you knew would result in impurity of thought and word and act, have you, first asking God for help, tried to show them their danger? Have you pointed out to them the peril of following a path of their own choosing? Mothers, have you neglected your God-given work,—the greatest work ever committed to mortals? Have you refused to bear your God-given responsibilities? In the time of trouble just before us, when the judgments of God fall upon the impure and unholy, will your children curse you because of your indulgence?

Your home is a little world of itself. In it, order, prompt obedience, submission, should prevail. It is a duty that parents owe their children to make wise rules for the guidance of the household, and then to see that these rules are obeyed.

The home is a training school. The mother is the teacher. She is to choose for her children. She is to mold and fashion their characters. She is to teach them to bring God into their lives. She should be so closely connected with God that through her he can work out his will.

Mothers, have you neglected your work? Then I beseech you to take it up now in the fear of God. Be converted. Before the year closes, confess your neglect to your wayward children, and ask them to help you to begin the new year aright, and during its hours, to live for God.

Parents, you are the ones who must decide whether your children shall choose the service of God or the service of mammon, eternal life or eternal death. Watch them carefully and tenderly. Give them wise instructions, line upon line, precept upon precept. Study their dispositions, that you may know what traits of character to repress and what traits to encourage. Teach them to guard constantly against selfishness, fraud, cruelty, dishonesty, and to cherish all that goes to make human beings Christlike. Remember that what your children learn in the home, they will carry with them when they go out into the world, and that it will affect all their future experience.

If you have neglected your work, repent before it is too late, and strive to atone for your neglect. Think of the time you have lost, and be doubly earnest in your efforts to undo the wrong you have done. The result of your neglect you may see in the wayward course of your children, and in their lack of power to resist the corrupting influence of the age. And very plainly you will see it when they go forth to fight the battle of life for themselves. I entreat you to arouse before it is too late, and take up your work, lest you be found unfaithful. To the parent who neglects his life-work, God cannot say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Review & Herald- December 23, 1902