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25. A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him.
Surely the Divine Spirit did not repeat the proverb (Verse 21) for nought. Was it not to deepen our sense of parental responsibility and filial obligation? Can parents be insensible to the prospect of this grief? Can children be hardened into the unnatural selfishness of piercing a parent's heart with such bitterness? (Chapter 19:13.) The mother's anguish is here added to the father's grief. (Genesis 26:35.) “As a sword in her bones,” is the apprehension of having “brought forth children to the murderer.” (Hosea 9:13.) How uncertain are the dearest comforts of earth! Our fallen mother anticipated the joy of “having gotten a man” — perhaps the promised seed — “from the LORD.” (Genesis 4:1.) Yet to the bitterness of her soul “he was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.” (1 John 3:12.) Her daughter naturally “remembereth no more her sorrow, for joy that a man is born into the world.” (John 16:21.) Already she grasps the delightful vision of his infant training, and ripening maturity. And yet too often he proves in the end a foolish son, and bitterness to her that bare him.
Absalom was named ‘His father's peace.’ Yet was he the source of his most poignant grief. This is not the “weeping of a night,” succeeded by a “joyous morning” (Psalm 30:5); but the “heaviness that maketh the heart stoop” (Chapter 12:25), perhaps for years, perhaps to the end of days. Its connection with eternity gives to the trial its keenest edge. To see a foolish son hurried irrevocably into his eternal doom — Oh! this to the godly parent is an awful conflict. (2 Samuel 18:33.) Strong indeed must be that faith (yet such faith has been vouchsafed)† which bows reverentially to the Divine Sovereignty, and maintains the serenity of peaceful submission.
But parental anxieties and sorrows must stimulate the enquiry — ‘How may this piercing thorn be spared, this bitter grief — the bitterest that ever a parent's heart can know — averted?’ The primary root of this sorrow is the indulgence of the will.† The vast power of parental influence must be used wisely, at once, at any cost. We must not instruct, or entreat only, but command.† We must allow no appeal from our authority, no reversal of our decision. This discipline in the spirit of love, and enforced by example, is God's honoured ordinance.
Then to give power to all other means, there must be a living faith in the word of God. For if I really believe that awful fact, that my child is “a child of wrath,” that Satan claims a right in him, and that if he die unconverted, hell must be his everlasting portion; shall not I apply myself with ceaseless energy to all the means for his soul's salvation; under the clear conviction that if he be not saved, “good were it for him that he had not been born”?
But this faith brings encouragement fully proportioned to the tremendous anxiety. For, if I be a Christian Parent, may I not claim a place for my child in the covenant of God? (Genesis 17:7.) May I not plead with him, and for him as a covenanted child? Here I desire to exercise a sound balance of well-disciplined confidence; encouraging parental hopes, and moderating parental anxieties. The law of the kingdom is, “that men should pray always, and not faint.” (Luke 18:1.) The fondest desires may not be accomplished till the eleventh hour. There may be many haltings, many withering blasts, many windings of the path. But “the bread cast upon the waters shall be found,” though it be not till “after many days.” (Ecclesiastes 11:1.)
Only let us see to it, that our faith proves it soundness as a practical principle. Do parents never pray that God would take their children as his own, while yet they train them as if they were for the world? Are we sure, that we desire nothing for them besides, or unconnected with, eternal life?† One such desire stirs up another; till at length these few little things thrust down the primary blessing from its place, and it becomes a nullity.
In fine — would we look for rest in our beloved children? (Genesis 5:29, marg.) Hold them loose for ourselves; fast for God. Connect them early with his Church. Train their first years in his yoke. Instead of a sinking grief to us, they will then be “the restorers of our life, and the nourishers of our age.” (Ruth 4:15.) Instead of being our bitterness as rebels against God, he will own and seal them, as “a seed to serve him, to declare his righteousness,” to set forth his praise. (Psalm 22:31; 92:13.)
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