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The Ministry of Health and Healing
The husband and father who is morose, selfish, and overbearing
is not only unhappy himself, he casts gloom upon all who live in his
home. He will reap the result in seeing his wife dispirited and sickly,
and his children marred with his own unlovely temper.
If the mother is deprived of the care and comforts she should
have, if she is allowed to exhaust her strength through overwork
or through anxiety and gloom, her children will be robbed of the
strength, mental adaptability, and cheerful buoyancy they should
inherit. It will be far better to make the mother’s life bright and
cheerful, to shield her from want, wearing labor, and depressing
care, so that the children may inherit good constitutions and may
battle their way through life with their own energetic strength.
Great is the honor and responsibility placed upon fathers and
mothers, in that they are to stand in the place of God to their chil-
dren. Their character, their daily life, their methods of training will
interpret His words to the little ones. Their influence will win or
repel the child’s confidence in the Lord’s assurances.
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The Privilege of Parents in Child Training
Happy are the parents whose lives are a true reflection of the
divine, so that the promises and commands of God awaken in their
children gratitude and reverence. Happy are the parents whose
tenderness, justice, and longsuffering reflect to the children the love
and justice and longsuffering of God, parents who, by teaching their
children to love and trust and obey them, are teaching them to love
and trust and obey their Father in heaven. Parents who impart to
their children such a gift have endowed them with a treasure more
precious than the wealth of all the ages—a treasure as enduring as
eternity.
In the children committed to her care, every mother has a sacred
charge from God. “Take this son, this daughter,” He says, “train it
for Me; give it a character polished after the similitude of a palace,
that it may shine in the courts of the Lord forever.”
The mother’s work often seems to her an unimportant service.
Her work is rarely appreciated. Others know little of her many
cares and burdens. Her days are occupied with a round of duties,
all calling for patient effort, for self-control, for tact, wisdom, and