Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (NIV)

I've only been a parent for about two years now, and so I found myself feeling a bit inadequate as I sat down to study this passage. However, turns out this passage isn't just for the parent; it's for all of us, church! Whether you have kids or not, I believe this passage holds a call for all of our lives.

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Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" (ESV). The first Hebrew word in this passage is hanak, and the more literal idea behind it is to narrow or guide. As so many ideas in Scripture do, this word brought my plants to mind.

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Experienced growers can guide or train plants into certain shapes and growth patterns, such as might be seen with a bonsai tree, a houseplant growing up a moss poll, or garden veggies up a trellis. If a grower wishes, a plant can be invited upward through patient and intentional cultivation.

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At the beginning of Ephesians 6, Paul says, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord" (v. 4). Similar to hanak in Proverbs, this bringing up of the youth in our lives is ektrepho in Greek, meaning to nurture or "nourish up to maturity." It seems that, just as children literally grow taller, so they should likewise be nourished and nurtured up, trained and guided along a certain path of growth spiritually.

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Interestingly though, Paul uses a little word play to illustrate what happens when we don't cultivate the next generation well. When he says "do not exasperate your children," he uses the Greek word parorgizo, which means "to rouse to wrath" or provoke. Just as we can train up our children (hanak) and nourish them up to maturity (ektrepho), it seems we can also call them upward in a negative way: rousing them to frustration, anger, and exasperation.

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This unfortunate alternative reminds me of another way plants can grow up that actually isn't good for them: When a plant isn't getting enough light, it begins to etiolate or stretch. In its search for light, its stems get longer and its leaves sparser. The leaves themselves even get smaller because the plant is putting so much energy into reaching for the light that it can't put proper energy into developing full leaves. This is a vicious cycle, because the leaves of a plant are the very wide, flat parts that catch the most sun to convert into energy for growth. Ironically, the more it has to stretch for what it needs, the less it has to give to growth.

And I think our children are probably the same. Maybe you are a mom or dad to children young or old. Or maybe you are an Auntie or an Uncle or a family friend. Maybe you're an educator in our schools or you serve with ACF Kids or Youth Culture. From whatever angle you are stewarding the lives of the next generation, remember this: We are raising them up. The question is to what?

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Are we rousing our children to frustration, always stretching for an unreachable standard? Or are we patiently calling them higher out of love? Are we mocking our youth with cynicism from our lofty place as older and assumedly wiser? Or are we in the trenches of life with them, stretching out our hand behind us to help them see the way up and through? Have we left them reaching and grasping for what is real and significant in this life on their own, drained from the struggle? Or are we cheering them on, patiently and intentionally guiding them up to new growth in the way they should go?

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Paul calls us not to rouse our children to exasperation, but to raise them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. How are you nurturing and nourishing the next generation?

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This call might be mainly for the kids that live under your roof, but it might also be for the ones that do not. The teenager who babysits for you, your challenging pediatric patients, or the kids you serve, worship, and learn alongside at church - how are you bringing them up in the Lord?

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To bring up and train up, we've got to look up, friends. Look up from our busy lives, look around, beyond just our nuclear families, and ask God how he might want to use YOU in raising up the next generation!

Jesus, you said that you wanted the little kids to come to you and that we should not hinder them. Speak that into my heart right now, whatever that looks like in the stage of life I'm in right now. Thank you for training me up in your ways through those you put in my life; please guide me into the same for those running behind me today. In your name, Amen!