Passing Knowledge

My sons asked me the other day when we were watching the “Jesus of Nazareth” movie, “why did He have to die like that? Isn’t Jesus God? Why are they beating Him up like that? why is He carrying the cross and yet He’s tired? why are those people so mean mum?” question after question they asked, it just didn’t make any sense to them, why did one person have to endure all that pain and suffering? At the back of my mind am asking God to guide me on how to answer them, then my youngest son says, “mum after God has endured all this, people are still bad, they are still doing bad things,” and unfortunately he was correct! we still don’t want nothing about this God who sacrificed so much for us! unfortunately we are too busy for Him! Then the mother of all questions comes, “mum, God could just have saved us even without dying on the cross, couldn’t He?”

This they could understand and relate to, it made sense to them! As young as they were, tears rolled down their cheeks as they continued to watch the movie, but it reached a point it was too sad for them to comprehend and they just went to sleep! At first I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn’t have let them watch it, maybe its too much for them, but I remembered what the book of Deuteronomy says in chapter 6:6-9 “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon 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 doorframe of your houses and on your gates.” Here we clearly see that we need to speak to our children about God, teach them the commands, that they will need to follow and they too will teach their children.

Sometimes I feel as Christians we slack a lot when it comes to things concerning God, we wait for our children to be taught in Sunday school or while they are in school, but we don’t take up the initiative ourselves! One thing that we can learn from our muslim brothers and sisters is this, at an early age, their children go for Quran teachings, which are called ‘madrasa classes.’ Here the children are taught the Quran and even cram it in the heads, they recite and keep reciting until it becomes a part of them. What of us? when do our children memorise the Bible? Sunday School service is at a maximum of one hour! do we allow our children to go for Vocational Bible School (VBS) or even church camps when they close school?

There is a saying that goes, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, or a swahili saying that goes, “sumaki mkunje angali mbichi” which means, bend the fish when it is still fresh, after cooking, if you try bending it, it will break! If we don’t teach our children about God now, when they are young and fresh, will they want to know this God after they have being exposed to all the evils of the world? If we don’t share with our children the Word of God, where is this next generation headed to? Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV) “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Jesus endured all the pain and suffering so that me and you might be saved! The stripes on His back, the crown of thorns on His head, The nails that went through His hands and His feet and the piercing on His side, were all so that me and you might be saved. Receive Jesus today and receive life everlasting!