photo #8847262

God keeps trying to lead and guide us, and we keep veering off the path. It is not just the sins of our youth that we need God to forget; it’s the sins of our middle age and more. It is easy to get side-tracked. God keeps teaching, the problem is that we don’t keep learning. Sometimes I think that the youth actually get it more than we do as we age. They know that they need to learn and depend on us to help them learn and not only the lessons they learn in school, but also the lessons they will need to learn for life. It is not good to give children bad example because they will follow us.Over the years, I have watched commercials on television because they often teach us both what to do and what not to do. An old commercial showed a father and son and the son wanted to do everything his father did, so her pretended to shave when his father shaved, tied his shoes, etc., and pretended to smoke when his father did. It was an anti-smoking ad. If you swear and curse, so will your children. If you cheat or steal, so will your children, if you are kind and generous, so, too, will your children be. One day I was getting out of my car in front of my home and my cat was sitting in the window. Two girls about 7 or 8 were passing by and told me that I had better be careful because some recent immigrants who lived in my neighborhood would catch her and eat her. Now, these girls didn’t come up with this all by themselves, they needed to be taught prejudice by adults. God gives us guidance and we need to follow, and we also need to guide those who come after us. Jesus gave us good example, and all Christians are called to do the same for others.Prayer: Lord, you have given us the tools to follow you, please give us the will to do so. Amen.