I had the great privilege of dedicating a baby this morning, a very happy baby at that. His parents and grandparents along with aunties and uncles and a few cousins all came forward to bless him and dedicate him to the Lord.
I will be honest, there wasn’t much for me to add at this point but as the whole church extended their hands to add their blessings and we called upon the Lord for a Godly life for this young fellow, I understood that the body of Christ had drawn together with love and kindness to dedicate not only this baby but his family to doing the hard work building a community one person at a time.
What is it that makes a good country? Is it the government and its laws and regulations? Is it the taxes it collects to redistribute to the poor? Does it take a village to bring up a good person and therefore a good country?
I don’t think so. A good country is made up of good states that are made up of good cities, towns and villages but we should understand that any of these groupings are a result of Godly people raised in Godly homes and that a person is only good when he or she is established in the Lord.
The God given purpose of marriage is to raise Godly children by parents dedicated to raising up their children in the way that they should go. This is not easy and honestly hopeless without help from God and help from others.
I remember as we raised our children in our little church how often the older men and women would give their advise on how we could raise our kids better if only we did this or if only we did that and often I wished they would just keep their advise to themselves until I was struck by passages in Titus that instructed the church to teach the younger members how to do things like raise children.
It is not easy to admit that you are not as smart and wise as you might think that you are but as I considered the wisdom of each bit of advise I got, I soon understood that if you look closer, you will find treasures worth the time and thought it takes to mine them.
If we allow the Lord to use the love and kindness of His people to help us out, we will soon reap a harvest of maybe not perfect children but better people than we would have raised by ourselves.
I know it is not easy to get to church every Sunday, much less for bible studies and other times, because life is very busy when we are raising our kids, but consider that when we around people who are also trying to be Godly we and our children are the better for the effort.
