One of the major factors in a successful life is discipline, especially self-discipline. By success I mean gaining life quality (righteous motivations and values) and achievement (life’s work and relationships, especially related to family). This context is likely to be gained out of the best applications of the person from a searched out vision about self and life. To make most practical, the evolving vision should be engaged sooner than later. Parents ought to be at the ready to assist their children in the process. The process should be a part of parenting, but it is too seldom found in the prelude period of mature and happy living for the emerging generation. It is surprising that parents will take on sometimes significant time and expense for their children to follow child interests, and nearly nothing on the maturation process. Perhaps parental concern for college entrance is presumed sufficient to meet this expectation. The prep period of parenting should precede that, so to make formal education to be planned as mature life emerges.
About the only common factor in most homes is the hope that the children will go to college, an important factor if the attendance in college contributes in the fulfillment of the vision and expectations. In my family, one of the best features in the nurture of our children was in building a desire to gain education, and that partly built on the expectations that were cultivated in our children, with some hoped-for projections introduced – that we held for them. The consequences have been satisfying both in their personal and professional lives. Further, we related the objective to Christian higher education in studying for an initial degree. The objective worked well relating to both their life contexts. In their personal lives they found factors in the context that led to choices of mates, the work they would do, and the values they would carry to their families. That welfare was primary for us. Results have been gratifying in sum.
The point is not the specific of formal education as an end, but the discipline needed to be and do what must be accomplished to achieve the fulfilled life. That life can’t be bought, conjured, faked, or popularized. It does take application, made practical in self-discipline. I am struck by the only confrontation we know about between Mary and Jesus. It is interesting that only one specific event is chosen out in the life of the child, Jesus, related to his human development under parental care. He was twelve years of age, the age that a child in a family of Israel would travel to the annual Passover observance in Jerusalem. During the return for home, Mary and Joseph discovered that Jesus was not in the entourage. For the culture of the time, there was permitted considerable casualness in the mixing of families on the walking trail. In the passing hours, the parents discovered that Jesus was not in the camel/donkey train. Returning to Jerusalem and searching three days, they found Jesus in the Temple discussing spiritual themes with the priests. In standard parental reaction, Mary remonstrated with Jesus about the distress his actions had created for her and Joseph. Jesus responded, putting a higher thought to her: Wist ye not that I should be about my Father’s business? Why three days to find him? With what they had gone through twelve years earlier, why would they not go to the temple before looking in all the other places for three days? Mary caught the point. We do feel that things must have changed somewhat after the brief exchange. Mary hid the event in her heart, and must have shifted in her parental approach to Jesus. At the least, the event, special to the Biblical purpose, arrests us to attention in any approach to children. What are the most important issues, questions demanding answers for life? Luke 2:52 is a magnificent summary of the results of the context of a family finding the disciplined and orderly life for emerging children. Rearing children in the four dimensions related to Jesus can’t be improved upon – never has been and never will be. Methodologies will change, but the objectives remain. For my children to develop in mind, body, as well as socially and spiritually is everything I yearn for in my children, and their children, and their children. I am engaged with a seventeen years old great grandson in working out that menu for his life. Were we to mentor our family membership in this pattern, we can be sure we have done what we ought to do, and have little or no concern about the outcomes of their lives. One might wish that the concepts were better understood and practiced. The current general approach isn’t working well enough. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020