Daily Lesson for October 15, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 1 verses 1 through 3:

1 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of

the wicked, 

nor lingered in the way of sinners,

nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

2 Their delight is in the law of the Lord, 

and they meditate on his law day and night.

3 They are like trees planted by streams of water,

bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; 

everything they do shall prosper.

Today’s Lesson is the same text we have taken for our Children’s Sunday theme in two weeks. It is a reminder to us of the good and moral life  and what it means to be rooted in a faith which sustains us through all life’s seasons. 

Yesterday, I saw a photo on Facebook of a friend whose infant grandchild was being dedicated in church. It was a lovely picture with parents holding the white-gowned baby, and all the grandparents and aunts and uncles surrounding. The caption was a quote from Deuteronomy 6 — probably the commission to the child’s parents:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

What we teach our children today are the things which will make them who they are later in life. They are like trees, planted in good soil, not far from the river of life. Their most significant growth is all hidden now, beneath the ground. They stretch out their roots to draw deep from the river. These roots will sustain them when the hard times come. These roots beneath the surface will be the source of their resilience and life even in the harshest of seasons.

We want to raise good and moral children. We want their lives to be full of the fruits of God’s spirit — peace, love, kindness, goodness, self-control.  But our lives do not start with fruits; they always start with roots. They begin with parent and child lying in the bed together having conversations about God and Jesus, they just before lights out.  They begin with conversations with grandma about her dad and what he did to stand up when the black church in town was threatened by violence. They begin with a Sunday school Lesson like the one I walked in on yesterday, when the teacher tells the students about Boaz and the honorable way he treated the vulnerable Ruth.

These are the roots of our faith. They’re the roots of our humanity.

And they are what make us who we are.