Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Instilling Customs

Luke 2:41-42 (ESV)
Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. [42] And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom.

I think too often today, parents, pastors and society alike don’t give enough attention to things like this. Jesus had parents who made church a custom. We don’t put enough stock in customs. Of course, customs have to be evaluated as to whether they are good or bad, or whether they support scripture or not. But good customs ought to be encouraged. Customs are the stuff of Childhood, that carries over into adult life, into senility. Good customs are great. And they start young. Children learn from them. They may not be able to articulate anything, but they learn. They learn truths that will sustain them for life. Coming to church, going through the motions, standing sitting, they might be bored as all get out. But they are learning. They might be acting up, but they are learning. When you give up, because you don’t think they have the ability to learn, that it is meaningless to them, they are acting up too much for you to get anything out of it, they are learning. If you give up going to church because they decided to scream during the sermon, or they wouldn’t sit still, and you think they are a nuisance to the rest of the congregation, they just learned something there too, and you won’t like the results of that. Jesus tells us to bring the kids up in the faith, Deut. 6, yes that is Jesus. We do this by instilling customs, just as the parents of Jesus did.

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