By Cindy Koch –
Our children are hungry. Wide-eyed, they look up to you for a meal of daily bread. When it’s cold, they shiver and pull you close. When it’s dark, they search for your strong arm to comfort them. When they are given that Word of Life spoken to them, declaring them to be a righteous child of the Most-High God, they look to you to feed them more.
A parent’s job is never easy—discovering the best way to feed our children. Whether it be food, education, activities, information, we are always concerned with making choices that will nourish our children. But I’ve had baffling conversations with parents lately, who don’t think twice about the spiritual food served up to their little ones. It breaks my heart to see their little hungry faces, right in front of me— starving.
“I don’t feel like I should impose my beliefs on little Johnny.”
“I want our Sally to be free to decide what she believes for herself.”
Misunderstandings of a good parent-child relationship has changed how we feed our children. Pressure for their independence has left our kids without the food they so desperately need. Blindly, parents can keep the most powerful Bread of Life locked away from their own children, with not even a blink of regret. Our world screams that our own passionate views are not allowed to touch anyone, not even our kids. Parents are afraid of being accused of brainwashing their own children—a terrible evil which offends our autonomous society. Somehow, our children are supposed to find their own way, their own food, their own values and beliefs.
Left to themselves, children will eventually find something to eat. Foraging through this world, they will fill that hunger with something. Not being filled with an external Word of purposeful creation, they will fill their bellies with lies of their own creations: men who identify as women, and vice versa, gods unto themselves. Not being satisfied with an external Word promising eternal life, they will gorge on the vain pleasures of this passing world as the only thing that matters. When left to themselves, children will eat, but they will starve for the Truth.
So, it is a good and necessary thing, parents, that you feed your children. Boldly pass them the most important food as freely as it was given to you. Tell them the great stories of our amazing God, so that they know who they are. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so they won’t be left to find food on their own. Speak Christ’s words of forgiveness into their ears, not holding any back. Fill them with hope so they will taste the promises to come. Surround them with God’s people who will continue to help you feed them along the way. His gifts, His food, is in such great abundance, and it’s yours to give. Our children don’t have to grow up starving.
