by Dr. W. Robert Smith
W HILE FLYING to speak at a Boston college, I select ed Luke’s gospel as a study for my devotions. A passage struck my eye concerning Zacharias and the birth of John the Baptist. He, of course, was the fore runner of our Saviour, preaching the baptism of repent ance and salvation. In speaking of John’s purpose in coming, the Scripture states that one of his ministries was “ to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the just” (Luke 1:17). The last two verses of Malachi declare, “ Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” The real hunger in every human soul is for love. The Lord has made us this way. There are hearts hungry for the love of a father and mother and for the fellow ship of a real home. We are restless until we find this because it is a foretaste of the love of God manifest in Jesus Christ and through the life and soul of a human being. The Biblical concept of parenthood is not that the father and the mother are purely responsible for the life of the child but that the parents are to be guides and overseers to bless, love and direct the lives of their children. One of the students at Bethel College, at St. Paul, was going out in the summer to reach the lives of some of the young people in his home town. He sought to cul tivate their friendship by playing baseball with them. Then he began to talk to them about the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. He spoke of the real meaning of the love of Christ in their lives. He told them about God, our heavenly Father. One boy’s face clouded and out of the deep trouble of his soul he said, “What did you say? If God is anything like my old man, you can keep Him!” What an example his dad had set. Every child hungers for love. In our home town a father and a mother were constantly quarreling. Finally they decided to separate. The mother became enamoured of another man. In her sinfulness she decided to aban don her husband and four children. Her husband said, “ Sweetheart, I love you. I want you to stay with the children.” She said, “No, I don’t love you, and I don’t want any of you any more.” His natural question was, “Well, what can I do for the children? How can I pro vide for them? I can’t stay at home. They need a mother.” She didn’t care. She abandoned them all. The youngest was a little boy only a few months old. The father, not wanting to give up his children for adop tion, decided he would put them in foster homes. This
little lad was taken by a godly Christian family. There they loved him and he came to think of them as his real father and mother. He lived there for something over four years. Then the father decided that he would remarry. He began to collect his children from foster homes. But now, the real mother jealously came back into the picture. She insisted on having the right of taking the children at least part of the time. By some strange miscarriage of justice she was given the privi lege. The little lad was badgered between his own mother who had abandoned him and his new step mother. His foster mother, whom he counted as his real mother, was never seen. He languished and became weaker and weaker. Finally he was hospitalized and died. One of the medical men said to me, “We had an autopsy and the only thing we could sort out was that this little child died of a broken heart. He no longer wanted to live.” In a hospital -in New York City they have some young men and women whose chief function it is just to love the sick boys and girls. They are not there to give injections or to carry on any kind of medical care. Their one and only job is love. An interesting thing took place in one of our local courts. There was a young man who was a juvenile de linquent. Brought up before the judge for the second time, parole was not possible. The judge said, “ I must sentence you to a correctional institution.” His father was an upstanding and respected man in our commu nity. The jurist continued, “ Son, why have you done this ? There isn’t anything that your father and mother wouldn’t do for you. Here you’ve broken their hearts. There’s your mother weeping and your father deeply grieved. Why have you done this?” The boy spoke up, “Your honor, you’ve asked me. It’s true there wasn’t anything my father wouldn’t do for me but there was nothing my father ever did with me. All I wanted was my father’s love and affection. There was no friend ship or understanding. He thought he could buy these things and satisfy his own conscience. I sought my companionship elsewhere. I will pay my price; I will not whimper. But ask yourself who is really guilty.” You may ask, “ But how do you love a child?” The first thing is that you must communicate with him. Tell him that you love him and mean it. Provide an atmosphere of love in which he finds acceptance. Let your love be poured out without selfish concern. And what will be your pattern? The Lord Jesus Christ Him self. He will give you the strength, too, as you seek it through His Word and by the power of the indwell ing Holy Spirit.
AUGUST, 1964
1J
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