Proverbs 22:6:  “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

If you are anyway remotely involved in your churches children’s work you will most likely hear someone quote this verse as your incentive to teach the children placed under your care.  I have no doubt that this verse is applicable to any situation where you are charged with caring for children. I believe every one of us who attended Sunday school or some club program in church when they were growing up were not aware of the fact that anything they say or do could affect a child for the rest of his life. We really didn’t need Solomon to tell us that as it is just general knowledge from our own experience.   This leads me to believe that there is a little more to this verse than meets the eye.

The word for child is na’ar which is both a male and female child as well as an infant. The word train is chanak which in its Semitic root has the idea of a narrowing.  A child has a wide range of choices to make and it is that parent, teacher, adult child worker who helps him narrow the choices to the way he should go. Chanak, or train also has the idea of experiencing and trying.  Much of the training an adult gives a child is the opportunity to experience the way he should go.  Experience is the best teacher.  A science teacher can explain the results of a science experiment, but when the students themselves can perform the experiment he will experience it firsthand and will likely never forget it.  I recall in Beginners’ Sunday School coloring pictures of Moses and the fiery bush, or the golden calf.  All those colorings still linger in my mind and help me recall the story.  The word for train chanak also has the idea of being tried. A wise teacher and a parent will allow a child to fail and encourage the child to try again.  Trying and trying again is another great teacher. So training a child in this passage has the idea of helping a child narrow his choices so he chooses the correct way and then giving the child the opportunity experience his choice, allow the child to fail and encourage the child to try and try again.  I think all of us can reflect on what a profound effect such a pattern of training had on us at an early age and how it shaped our lives.

When he is old.  Actually in the Hebrew it should read, “Even when he is old.”  To say when he is old is to suggest the child will fall away but will return.  Although that is true, I know in my case, I never fell away from my early training and I know many who have also stayed true to the faith they were raised in.  So for us it is even when he is old. However, the beauty of the Hebrew language is that you can also translate it when he is old he will not depart from it.  So even if he falls away he will return.

So what does this have to do with my entering a period of silence before God?  It seems the first thing on God’s agenda is to take me back to the day before my first theology class, my first Hebrew and Greek class, to a day when my faith was just a simple faith, a day before my faith took on such a complexity.  A day when my brother told me a fly saucer landed in our back yard and I went out to look, I never questioned him. A day when faith was so easy and simple.  God had to take me back to a day before I wondered what predestination meant, what the perseverance of the saints meant, before I began to wonder whether epistemology was really a presupposition for neo-orthodoxy.  He had to take me back to a day when I heard the story of Jonah in the belly of a whale with my teacher using a flannel graph and wonder how a guy could last three days in a fishes stomach without the acids dissolving him. A time where we sang Jesus Loves the Little Children of the world and not wonder about racism, where we climbed up the Sunshine Mountain and not wonder what in the blazes was the Sunshine Mountain. Where I cut out pictures of Jesus and pasted them to a little scrap book in Primary Sunday School.  Where Wayne Kemp played the piano and we gathered around singing chorus’s late into the night.  To a day when I memorized Bible verses to get merit badges for Awana having no idea what the verse meant but fifty years later those verses coming back to my mind when I needed it the most. Where our Intermediate Sunday School Superintendent Herman Bell took us to China Town if we memorized our Bible verses and had perfect Sunday school attendance.  To a time where I sang the B-I-B-L-E in Tiny Tots and held up my Bible learning to love that Book so much that I devoted my life to study that book, where Bill Pointer our Junior Church superintendent taught us to sing “Nothing is Impossible.”  Where Chuck and Robbie and my parents took the young people on weekly social activities and yearly retreats, where little white gloved ladies assured me that God had a great plan for my life and they were praying for me and where I could generate a big smile and Praise the Lord from them when I said I was planning to go to Moody Bible Institute and become a pastor and even draw a tear or two when I would add that I might even do some missionary work.

As I drove through the Southern states on my way to the Monastery I had a station on the radio that played all the old Gospel music and hymns that I grew up with transporting me back in time when I had a simple faith, a faith that never questioned, a faith that simply believed in God and loved Him with all my heart.   As I drove along the country side I was taken back to time not too long ago when my world collapse, my marriage collapse, my career was in shambles, my finances were a mess and my future looked hopeless.  It was a time I began to question my faith, the reality of God and if God even existed. It was a time I cried out to God just where is my faith?   It was also a time God took me back to those little Gospel chorus’s, those little pictures pasted in a scrap book, those evenings around the piano singing hymns and chorus’s, to those trips to China Town with Herman Bell, Friday night Youth Activities with my parents and Chuck and Robbie and those weekend retreats and then Jesus spoke to my heart and said, “There is your faith, it was implanted in your heart because you attended a church where there where people who loved you, prayed for you and chanak trained you in the way you should go, no sweat, you’re ok, your faith is intact.”

So I go into my time of silence before God with just a simple childlike faith. Ready to believe like a child that God uses his birds and animals to speak to us about his wonders, ready to believe that a tree, a field of green grass cry out to me of God’s love and caring, ready to believe that God speaks to me in little coincidences and everything that quickens my spirit.  Ready to believe like a little child that Jesus is in the meditation room every morning waiting for me to sit down and just talk with Him. Ready to believe that Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.

We’d love for you to visit Chaim’s page on Amazon…we appreciate your support very much :)

http://www.amazon.com/Hebrew-Word-Study-Teachers-Silence/dp/1490715401/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1463974839&sr=8-6&keywords=chaim+bentorah