p. 12 | Ignoring the Children by DELTA L. SLOAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 25, 1912

Ignoring the Children

By DELTA L. SLOAN

DELTA L. SLOAN

Not long ago an officer of one of our conferences was visiting the churches and isolated members through the conference, and on his way stopped at the home of a certain isolated family. After he had gone on his way, the mother, speaking of him to her seven-year-old child, said, “How do you like him?” Unexpectedly came the rather blunt reply, “O, I don’t care much for him!” “Why?” the mother asked in surprise. “O, because he won’t talk to anybody but you and papa! He didn’t talk at all to me;” and the mother could not remember that the minister had spoken one word to her little one.

Having noticed this tendency on the part of some of our ministers, as well as some of the laity, to ignore the children, it has grieved me much. The members of the family mentioned do not have either Sabbath-school or church-school privileges, and the mother is trying hard in a very worldly community to bring up her child in the fear of the Lord. She had a right to expect that the visiting minister would show a kindly missionary interest in her little one, thus helping her to bind his heart closer to the truth; but the child, apparently passed by unnoticed, felt the seeming indifference. An opportunity was lost of showing to the child the love of the Father, and thus of drawing him nearer to the kingdom.

Let us take time and thought for Jesus’ little lambs. They have so much to meet now, temptations and snares of every description on every hand; and they certainly need all the help they can get from the older members of God’s family. Let us strive in this as in other things to imitate our perfect Pattern, the lowly Jesus, who said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”