Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me

Mother's Day has just passed and soon it will be Father's Day, so I thought I would stick with the family theme until next month. We haven't yet begun to celebrate children's day, maybe because everyday is children's day. I think I hear mothers everywhere agreeing. When it comes to topics dealing with children the choices are as numerous as our imagination would allow. So, for the next three weeks I'd like to focus on three areas - how should children be treated? What is their role in the family? What does the Bible have to say about children? Today I bring you the first part.


Children are to be cherished

Children are a gift from God and as such they are to be cherished. Psalm 127:3- 4 says, "Lo, children are an heritage from the Lord; and the fruit of the womb is his reward.  As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are the children of the youth." Our children are a reward from God, and we know that a reward is something that's good, therefore our children are to be loved and cherished.

Children are to be disciplined

"For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD ..." Genesis 18: 19
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old , he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).
"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame" (29: 15).

Children are to be protected

Moses' mother, a Hebrew woman, hid him for three months so he would not be killed by Pharaoh.
"And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein;" Exodus 2 :3.
"If men strive , and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished" (Exodus 21: 22).
"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).

Children are to be taught in the things of God

"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath : but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).
"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God" (Luke 18: 16).
"And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of thy children" (Psalm 54:

Children are to be provided for

"... for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children" (2 Corinthians 12:14).
"A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children" (Proverbs 13:22).