It is impossible to estimate the tremendous influence which children have on the happiness of their parents. The unfortunate thing about it is that the children are the last to realize it. It may be that a misplaced modesty inclines them to imagine that their course in life cannot be of much consequence to any one. In many cases, unhappily, gross selfishness engenders sheer indifference to the feelings of those who have most claim upon them, so that they never give a thought to the pain they are inflicting.
But behind these special points is the universal fact that no one can understand the depth and overpowering intensity of a parent’s love until he becomes a parent himself. Then, in the yearning anxiety he experiences for his own children, a man may have a revelation of the love which he had received all the days of his life without ever dreaming of its wonderful power.
But surely, up to their capacity for understanding it, children should realize the great trust that is given to them. They are entrusted with the happiness of their parents. After receiving from them life, food, shelter, innumerable good things and a watchful, tender love throughout, they have it in their power to make bright the evening of their father’s and mother’s life, or to cloud it with deep, dark gloom of hopeless misery. …
In the infancy of their children fond parents often dream of the earthly prosperity they would wish for them – a brilliant career, success in business, wealth, renown, happiness. But as life opens out more fully they come to see that these are of secondary importance … and it is soon swallowed up in just pride and delight if he is upright and kind and good.
It is not the dullness, nor the failures, nor the troubles, nor the early death of children that bring a father’s “grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.” It is their sins. If these sins show direct unkindness, the grief reaches it saddest height. Then the father may well say, with poor Lear –
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”
The son has it in his power to make his parents life happy or miserable. So great a trust involves a serious responsibility. “No man liveth unto himself.” Besides his higher obligations, the son has a life in regard to his father and mother. He is not at liberty to run riot as he chooses, because he thinks his own future only is at state. By all the terrible pain he inflicts, by the deep gladness he might have conferred, the guilt of his sin is aggravated. …
If the mad young man cares little for abstract righteousness, if he has lost the fear of God, still is it nothing that every new folly is a stab in the heart of those who have done most for him and who would even now give their lives to save him? It is not unmanly to say to one’s self, “For my mother’s sake I will not do this vile thing.” It is devilish not to be capable of such thought. Similar considerations may help us in our highest relations.
The Pulpit Commentary, Proverbs 199-200, Proverbs 10:1, (W. F. Adeney)
Gold Nugget 245
The Tremendous Power of Children
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