From the Pastor’s Study
Telling the Story to the Next Generation Oct 6, 2021
At the age of 93 his mind was still sharp even if his body had begun to fail. He was incredibly knowledgeable about a whole range of subjects, and my visits with him were always engaging and encouraging. A few months after he turned 94 he was diagnosed with lung cancer (hardly a surprise since he smoked cigarettes, a pipe, and cigars for decades), and he died a few weeks later. I did his funeral and at his funeral I commented that with his death so much knowledge and wisdom had become inaccessible to us. He had transferred some of what he had learned over the years to me, and I am sure he did the same for his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. But, for the main part, much of what he knew had died with him.
A few weeks ago, when reading about a Jewish community in Iran, I came across this proverb: “When someone dies, a library burns.” This simply means that when someone dies, all the knowledge they had passes away with them, and the quantity of knowledge, according to the proverb, is equivalent to the knowledge stored in the books of a library. Perhaps the proverb exaggerates, but we get the point.
In a conversation with one of my brothers a month or so ago I learned that one of my great uncles, Henk, had made the news around Remembrance Day. He had been a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII, and he survived, but barely. As he began to walk back toward his home, he was so hungry he boiled grass for his meal. He happened upon a Canadian contingent of soldiers, and one of those soldiers gave him a meal, and as Henk was about to continue his journey, gave him two chocolate bars and told him to save them for the journey. Because of that act of kindness Henk decided to immigrate to Canada, hoping to meet that soldier again. Years later, Henk’s daughter struck up a conversation with an elderly gentleman in a store, and this gentleman, a veteran, told the story how he had met this Dutch prisoner of war and gave him two chocolate bars. As he talked, Henk’s daughter realized that her father was the recipient of those chocolate bars. Henk was still living, although suffering from dementia, but the two could meet again after the chance encounter decades earlier.
It is a wonderful story, but as I heard it from my brother, I regretted that I had never taken the time to visit my great uncle Henk. He has passed away now, and his treasure trove of stories has died with him. Something of my family history has been lost.
I think it was about the time I turned 40 that I really began thinking about my family history and I wished more than once that I had taken the time to talk to my relatives who could have told me about my roots. I didn’t take the time, and, perhaps, they didn’t see the need to pass those stories along. With their deaths libraries have been lost.
As I reflect on how easy it is to lose the stories of the past, I also reflect on how important that we pass on what we know to our children. If we don’t pass on our learning and wisdom, it may well be lost to them. Of all the things we can pass on the most important is our faith. While it is true that we can not force our children to believe, it is also true that if we don’t tell them about what God has done for us, they won’t know. How else will they acquire this very important information, this knowledge and wisdom? If we don’t share with the next generation the truths of the faith, where will they learn to believe?
There are important things we can teach the next generations. We can teach them how to add and multiply, how to read and write, how to tend a garden or milk a cow. We can teach them how to play hockey or broomball. We can pass on to them the knowledge and wisdom we have acquired over the years. But the most important things we can give our children is our faith in Jesus Christ. We can give them everything in the world, but if we don’t give them the understanding that there is a God of grace who loves them through his Son, Jesus Christ, then we have failed our children. Why would we not give them the one thing that is more important than anything else we have?
Again, it is true that we cannot make our children believe. We cannot make them listen to stories of our past either. But if we don’t tell them, they can’t know. We want the next generation to know what God’s grace is all about, and we must tell them if they are to know. Our part is to tell them. Again, we can’t give them faith, for they have to learn to believe themselves (and will through the Holy Spirit), but we can tell them what God has done for us.
Last Sunday we celebrated a baptism, and it was good to see the great grandmothers in church celebrating God’s faithfulness to their great granddaughter. God is faithful, and we see that in baptism. At the same time, we know that God used the faithfulness of parents as they shared their knowledge and faith in Jesus Christ with their children. Let us be among those who pass on to our children the stories of God’s grace and faithfulness that they too can know and, by God’s grace, believe.
Pastor Gary
