There were three readings, but I spoke to Deuteronomy 6:1-9.
Building Societies often use an image of children to encourage us to start planning for the – their – future. I have one here: ‘me&my little ones’ Inside it says ‘I’d like to give them a good start in life’.
What are we going to give our children? What inheritance are we giving, for example to the choir who sang so wonderfully today? An important question for us all whether we be Chair of School Governors somewhere, as our Chair of the Council is, a teacher, a parent, as we are here as we seek to strengthen our children’s work – SPYK.
Last week I was in a school and had with me this painting, done by my daughter when she was in about Year 11. I was waiting for something when a child came up to me and said, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful’. We started talking about it. ‘I could never do anything like that’. ‘Well’ I said, ‘my daughter was around 16. You are 9. In a few years, perhaps you could’.
He got to showing me his art workbook. In it was a fabulous cartoon. ‘Did you do this?’ ‘Yes’ and he took me to show me more in his classroom. On the wall was a large cartoon. ‘That’s mine’. ‘Wow’ – and I meant it. It was like a character out of a Hannah Barbera cartoon. But with its own distinctive look and character
In my small way I was giving him an inheritance. I was setting his hopes in the future. Maybe one day he will go on to produce great art or cartoons, because I or much more likely his teachers have encouraged him.
Our words are powerful things. There was an Enid Blyton ‘Famous Five’ book on the table. ‘I’ve probably read this’ I said, ‘I know’ he said. ‘You told us in assembly so we’re reading them’. Oh dear, the educationalists won’t be pleased with me!, I thought.
Our Old Testament reading included these words:
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.[a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Some of our young children are binding the commands of God on their foreheads. Or better to say, in their foreheads, as they learn our memory verses or other parts of the Bible
Mums and dads are giving their children an inheritance. I see the value of that inheritance when I take funerals. What people have learnt in their childhood stands them in good stead in the crises of life.
When one of our daughters was on a French trip in Boulogne
My father passed an inheritance to me.
· Orphaned
· Brought up by Barnados
· Not allowed by his family to take up the job he wanted in the early 1930s
· D Day and Dunkerque, surviving the war
He then studied and worked hard and sacrificially, and made a home for mum and myself. He was determined that I should have the opportunities he did not have. And he succeeded, and passed onto me all that I am. I am the inheritance my father passed to me.
The biggest inheritance we give to our children is ourselves.
An ancient Jewish saying goes; "With each child, the world begins anew."
We give that new start as we provide as much as possible, like my parents did for me, a stable home where love endures over time because of the faithful constant love of mum and dad. Where both mum and dad’s love is invested in their son or daughter because she or he is their offspring. The old saying ‘Blood is thicker than water’ contains much wisdom.
I remember once for fun playing off mum and dad. I told each that the other wasn’t happy about something, and stepped back to watch what would happen. Well, it stayed at the fun level. But what their love hadn’t been secure? What if I had caused a row, what if that row had broken their marriage, what guilt would I carry now?
This of course is the Christian ideal. And the ideal for many other too, not least Judaism on a day when I will quote the Chief Rabbi. Things go wrong. We must as a society know how to welcome not judge those for whom life is less than best – every one of us here.
But we must also never forget that it is less than best – that there is an ideal for which we all strive even if none of us succeed. It is good that we do not condemn, but there is a difference between condemnation and discernment.
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I must begin to close:
It takes faith to have a child. I guess we have all known people without some sort of faith. I recall a woman I knew decades ago for whom life must have gone very wrong. ‘They shouldn’t bring children into this world. It is a wicked world’ – as she pointed out every piece of litter on the pavement.
It takes faith to have a child . It takes faith that there is a future for them in the world. To quote the chief Rabbi:
faith that we are here for a purpose, that we are part of a larger story that began long before we were born and will continue long after we are no longer here, that we have duties to the past and to the future that are not of our making… Times Online May 21 2010
Faith is not something for Sundays, or Saturdays, or any single day come to that. Faith is either to do with every day, every family, everything we do, or it is not faith.
Maybe the biggest deception has it that you can put faith in a compartment, in a box. That is your private affair. That is a matter of opinion. That we, in this context, should not bring up our children in any faith but let them decide when they are older.
An oak tree once decided to have an acorn. But the oak wasn’t convinced whether it should be an acorn or the seed for some other kind of tree. It decided to let the acorn decide for itself.
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