Where Are Your Children?

What might be our thoughts and feelings if we should find ourselves face to face with the Lord and Master of mankind? Suppose His steady eyes were upon us at this moment⎯and that we would know that He would know our thoughts, our lives, our errors, our honest efforts, our innermost intent. Suppose today we were facing the just Judge of us all, as some day we surely shall. We know our own imperfections, or some of them at least. We excuse ourselves often. We repent, sometimes sincerely⎯but then sometimes repeat the errors of the past. Repentance has to carry over in our actions to be acceptable, to be sincere. Suppose He were questioning us as parents. One question He would surely ask⎯a question we should always be able to answer: Where are your children? What are they doing? How are they living? What have you taught them? How have you led them? What kind of guidance have you given? What example? “My life is my message,”¹ said Mahatma Gandhi. What have our families seen and felt form us? What values have we instilled in their souls? Have we disciplined them⎯in patience, with kindness, but with firmness and with principles clearly defined. Do we instill in them strength, standards; reverence; respect for law; convictions as to morals, conduct, commandments? Can we in good conscience account for our teaching, for our training⎯for the full effect our lives have had upon those whom God has entrusted to us? It is a question that as parents we must sometime ask ourselves, and the earlier we ask it, the more likely we shall have an answer that will lift and bless their lives⎯and our lives also. Where are your children?