To know where they are… – Sunday May 18, 1958
A much-blessed mother and father were once asked how they had so well reared their children. They lived with modest means, seemingly with no unusual advantages—except love, and character, and common sense, and common convictions.
The mother answered the question with a short and unpretentious sentence—an answer that implies much, though it seems simple: “We always tried to know where they were,” she said, Children often wonder why parents want to know, need to know—why, in the absences of children, fathers and mothers wonder and worry.
But it is an obligation parents cannot conscientiously set aside. One of the safeguards of life is to keep close to those we love, to seek counsel, to share confidences. We all need to talk things out; we all need to look at the several sides of any problem or proposition. And who better to take into our confidence than those who love us, those who have helped to give us life, those who have lived longer, and who have learned some of life’s hard lessons, and whose only motive concerning us is to assure our happiness and success?
Who more than parents know our thoughts, our actions, our problems, our activities and opportunities? They are legally, morally, inescapably responsible for us.
Our sorrows are theirs. Our failures reflect upon them. Our successes accrue to their credit. They have both the right and responsibility to know where we are, and what influences shape our lives.
Furthermore, it is part of the joy and satisfaction of life to share experiences with others, to have someone trusted to tell them to. And one evidence of gratitude, and of thoughtfulness to those we love, and live with, to those who have most interest in us, is to keep close in confidence and communication with them. This is not only a source of satisfaction but also a source of safety.
“He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers . . . “1 Keeping in mind mothers and fathers waiting (and keeping in mind that someday we shall return to account for every experience to the Lord God who gave us life), is one of our surest safeguards.
And well would we keep in close confidence and communication with Him, and with loved ones waiting.
1Malachi 4:6
May 18, 1958
Broadcast Number 1,500