106- Obedience for a Five-Year-Old Boy

Donald G. Barnhouse tells us that once he was in a big hotel and heard a mother telling her five-year-old son that she was going to leave him for a moment to attend to someone standing outside the room. The boy answered in a loud voice and in a way which attracted attention and with bad manners saying, "No."

The mother begged her son two or three times to leave the room for a while and come back. The boy answered her saying, "If you go out I won’t eat my food for a whole day."

The mother had to stay beside him wondering what to do.

It is true that the moderate or the middle road is a royal way to virtue. We love our children, respect their personalities and create in them the spirit of leadership, but without neglecting the firmness of love.

I remember when I was in New Jersey I visited one of the families when the father told me the following story:

"When my young son went to elementary school, he learned from the children there that if one of the parents spanked the child, the child should call the police for him/her. Indeed my son made this mistake. As I warned I would spank him, I was surprised to hear him threatening to call the police for me.

I told him that I didn’t expect him to call the police for me; rather, I took him to the police station. There I met a policeman and asked him in front of my son, "What if your son made a mistake? Wouldn’t you chastise him?"

"I’ve to let him understand that he made a mistake and if he insisted I chastise him."

"Would your son threaten to call the police for you?"

The policeman laughed, was nice to my son and said to him, "Obey your parents."

As we returned home, my son never tried to threaten to call the police for his parents.

The boy listened to the policeman. While we do not obey the Divine commandments.

→ English translation of the story here at St-Takla.org: طاعة لابن خمس سنوات.

My Lord, fill my heart with love to all.

Teach me to respect every soul, even the soul of a suckling baby.

Let me see You in every soul and rejoice in You.

Grant me to share the features of Your love.

 Grant me to die so that every other person may live.

Grant me Your Divine wisdom,

Then my love would not change to decrease or slacken.

Grant me love full of firmness.

And firmness full of love, You are love, You the Word of the Father.

+ As we love God we love ourselves

+ He who does not value his own self can not ask a valuable gift from God.

+ You will not find a more valuable gift than Him.

+ But if you see a more valuable gift ask Him by any means.

+ Is there no reward in the hands of God? There is none but His own self.

St. Augustine.

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