The Warning Signs and Symptoms

Speaking again of the power of prevention: Often we become so busy that we ignore the symptoms and the warning signs in many matters. Under the pressures of the lives we live, we sometimes become so intent on the next place we have to be, the next thing we have to do, that we often ignore impressions, which, if we had heeded them, might have helped something good to happen or prevented something bad from happening.

Parents sometimes become so busy with other interests and activities that they fail to see, or, if they see, fail fully to sense the first signs of changes in their children – changes of attitude, change in affection, changes of interest and activity, change in the company they keep. These may be for better or for worse, but at least parents should pause and sense and see – should watch the signs – the warning signs – should watch the symptoms.

Patiently and prayerfully as they live for it, parents are entitled to a kind of wisdom, to a discerning sense concerning their children; and by love, and by wise patient counsel, they can sometimes save many mistakes and hazards and heartaches, and can sometimes keep their children from cluttering their lives, from marring their records, from turning down wrong roads. By watching early signs and symptoms, not too obviously, no too intrusively parents can often exercise the power of prevention.

Often, in other ways also, people may have impressions of things they should or shouldn’t do – a kind of still small voice that seems to talk inside – something we call conscience, and something beyond what might be called conscience. And when a person approaches decisions or situations which have inherently within them the elements of danger or disgrace, it would seldom seem that anyone could honestly say that he is entirely unaware of any sense of warning, of any sense that he was considering something he shouldn’t do.

Call them what we will, we often have reason to regret ignoring the warning signs and symptoms. Alertly, prayerfully, earnestly, we should pay more honest, purposeful attention to the power of prevention.