Starkville Daily News

DEVOTIONAL PAGE

- By Gary Andrews gary@gadevotion­als.com

Our greatest assets for the future are our today’s youth. We, as adults, have the responsibi­lity to nurture and train these youth in values, morals, integrity, responsibi­lity, ethics and optimism.

There is a Chinese Proverb that goes like this; “All the flowers of all the tomorrows are the seeds of today.”

I am a product of the sixties and the hippie movement. I saw first hand when the youth of the country starting rebelling against all authority and renouncing all they were ever taught.

If it feels good do it! That was the saying of the day and most of the sixties youth participat­ed in it.

Probably some of the problems we are experienci­ng today are because of the training the youth of the sixties have given their own teenagers of today.

Times have changed. We as parents of today may have waited too late to realize that we don’t have the answer to every problem and that just possibly our parents were smarter than we thought.

A lot of problems in society today are because of our low morals, unethical values, lack of discipline, and no desire for what the future holds. Maybe our parents didn’t care enough to discipline us in the ways we needed it most.

Proverbs 13:24 tells us, “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him,” has been just a saying and something that we have not adhered to.

Now that we are the parents and the adults trying to maintain a trouble free environmen­t for our children, we wish that our younger years could have been more of listening and learning instead of rebelling and doing what felt good.

For me, I am an optimist. I don’t feel it is too late to pave a good road for a bright future for the young people of America.

We need to bring our morals and ethics up to standard and then pass on to our children the idea of doing things right the first time. We need to act and talk positive. Let’s be more energetic about the future and teach them the values of what life should be about.

More optimism and good positive feedback are what our youth need. They need to feel good about themselves and the road they are traveling on. They need to have sense of direction and a destinatio­n that will provide them a safe comfort zone when they have achieved it. Let’s teach them the difference between right and wrong!

Even though we can’t correct the mistakes we have made in our past, we can help someone younger than we are from making the same mistakes. It is up to us as to what the future holds for America. The seeds that we are planting today determine how pretty and bright the flowers of tomorrow are going to be.

Prayer: Father I pray for our youth of today. I pray that you will give me wisdom to lead in the direction that you would have them to go. Amen.

(Suggested daily Bible readings: Sunday Galatians 5:16-26; Monday - Psalm 143:10-11; Tuesday - 1 Corinthian­s 2:10-16; Wednesday - 2 Chronicles 9:23; Thursday - Jobe 32:4-9; Friday - Psalm 119:33-38; Saturday - Philippian­s1:9.) A097-10.

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