Kids Safety

2 Kings 11:3

He remained hidden with his nurse at the temple of the LORD for six years while Athaliah ruled the land.

When we were considering which church to attend here in Cebu, one of our prayed-for considerations was a good Sunday School for our kids. I was a product of one and I know how much it’d help me raise them well in the faith. Although back in history, this movement in England was actually a literacy program for the poor child laborers, and not for church people. With Sunday as their only day off, they used this time to teach them reading and writing with the Bible as main textbook. One site wrote: ‘Sunday schools provided an alternative to Sunday rowdiness’. Delinquency was rampant then and they hoped that through these classes, moral transformation would take place. With the Bible in their hands, it sure made a difference to millions of children.

When Joash was born, it was not the best time in history either. He was still being nursed when his father, King Ahaziah, died in the hands of the Syrians. Next we read of his grandmother Athaliah who murdered all his sibling-princes so she could take the crown. Imagine being unsafe in your own home. Where would you run? And as a babe, how could he run? But in God’s eyes, no dark year in history is dark at all. To Him, night shines like the day. In His sovereignty, He orchestrated Josiah’s aunt to be there at the time of the massacre to hide him. And for six years, he was kept hidden in the temple, raised by Jehoiada the priest. It was a breath of fresh air in all Judah to witness the coronation of this young boy – Scriptures on hand and God’s anointing on his head. For a time, he was thought to be the great grandson of the wicked Ahab. But that day, everybody remembered he was first of all, a son of David.

‘It’s not safe out there’.  I can still hear my parents worried sigh whenever I ask for their permission to go out with my friends twenty years ago. Soon, it will be my time to look out at that window and I’m guessing I’d probably give the same script.  Who’d not be alarmed with the bad news left and right, day and night? But come to think of it, the world was just a family of four when Adam’s son was killed by his firstborn. Home is not the safest place. God is. No sheep of His can be snatched from His hands.  Let’s teach our children to listen to His voice. With Scriptures on hand, they have a light to their path. That even in the valley of the shadow of death, they can walk and not fear. But don’t just bring them to Sunday School. Be with them in church. Jeremiah 23 says, ‘I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing’. Teachers exist because parents do not. Hold that Bible now and read it to your child. Later may be too late.