Tuesday Reading: 1 Timothy 5:1-2
Key Verse: 1 Timothy 5:2
2 older women as mothers, the younger as sisters in all purity.
Devotion:
The last time we looked at these two verses I talked about the elderly and how they often get the rough end of the stick. Today I want to focus on the youth and the way that they treat each other; not because I am older now and look back on youth but because I want them to open their eyes to reality! It’s not a case of I am old and can see the difference between how children treat each other now to how I treated my friends when I was younger because I know what was going through my head back then and I know that the difference is only in that it is more public now.
No matter how much our parents drilled into us the importance of treating others in a manner that you would like to be treated we continued to push the boundaries as far as we could. I see the same happening now just like we did. So why the warning about it now? Well, that’s the easy part, this verse stuck in my head after reading it, in particular those last three words, “in all purity”. You don’t get to think much of those kind of words now through the life that we live because of open media culture with things like facebook making peoples thoughts heard all round the world instead of them staying in their heads. Is social media then to blame? No it’s still the people that are to blame...
When God says that He wants us to treat younger boys and girls like brothers and sisters it is because we are not ready for the full on relationships that we insist on trying out at that age. No, we don’t need all the practice we can get to that we get it right in the end... What we need to do is to treat each other in all purity so that we can really get to know each other before we start doing things like getting involved with each other. I am not trying to be old fashioned – this is simply God’s wish for us in our lives. We can look back and think “if only I had the knowledge then that I do now” and lament at how we should have done things or we can go out and teach people of God’s ways, the right ways, the pure ways and allow our children to not have to lament like we do.
Points to Ponder:
How do you think of others?
So you think God agrees with your personal thoughts?
