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Show ' ;J Si HlljSIU IntenuUontl Utilfcra kjl : ':" ' iU .UiLlITfl SuncfaT Srhyd bofn .By OR. KEHNETH J, FDR6MAH 1 SCRIPTURE i cu 16:1-5 j 17(18-1$: I CorlnthUnn 4tl4-21: 16:10-11; Phlllppian 2:19; 1 Thcsnalonlani 8:1-10: II Timothy 1:3-14: 8:14-16. DEVOTIONAL ' READING I Plm 119rl29-136. Faith: A Family Tradition Lesson for September 26, 1948 HERE IS a brief Bible quiz: What Christian man did Paul ! recommend to the Philliplans as the one completely unselfish person ; he knew? When Paul needed a man ' W ? Present his ideas i li ''' to a "problem Vfc&$i church" whom did y'', he send? When Paul I ffil'y$'fy& waned reliable In- V'''''''?j ormatin about a y, church, on whose llA rePort did be de-pend? de-pend? Whom did Dr. Forfeman , ,, . , , , Paul call "son" more often than any one else? The answer to all these questions is the same: Timothy. Certainly a man whom the great. Saint Paul found so congenial, so reliable, so unselfish and effective a Christian, is a man worth our careful attention. We ask this question ques-tion about him: What made him what he was? Faith at Home SOME MEN have to leave home to find faith. But perhaps the happiest hap-piest Christians, certainly the most fortunate, are those who cannot remember re-member what it was not to have faith. It was the atmosphere they breathed as children. The first people they knew were Chirstians, prayer and faith were taken for granted, the name of Christ was heard only in reverence and love, never in jest or anger. Timothy grew up in such a home. When he became a mature, work-.ing work-.ing Christian he had no wasted ; years to regret, no wild oats to pull 'up. The faith of his adult mind I was not scarred by the acid remains re-mains of earlier doubt. Timothy's life was all of one piece. He was born to faith, he grew up in it. Homes can do a great deal for the children who live in them. But nothing else physical health, poise, culture, friends, ambition nothing else is quite so valuable a gift or quite so lasting, as faith. In later years faith may have to be pounded into a person or shocked into him; but in childhood faith is woven in, welded in, and that is as it should be. Happy the Christian who does not have to turn his back on his childhood when he turns his face to Christ! Book of Wisdom U"p ELIGION cannot be taught, xV it can only be caught," is an old saying. It is partly true, for you cannot set any dozen people at random ran-dom down on a bench and teach them into faith. If teaching religion were as simple as that, then every Sunday school could guarantee that every one of its graduates would become a saint. Nevertheless, religion re-ligion can partly be taught, for in a book there may be crystallized the faith of many a generation. A book may concentrate and preserva the insight, the inspiration, the assurance as-surance of men and women who though dead yet speak. Living with books of faith is like living with many families of faith at the same time. Such a book is the Bible. And It was the Bible, or so much of it as had been written, the Old Testament, which was tho one Book in Timothy's boyhood home. Through the Scriptures, the boy's mother taught her son not merely her own faith but that of many a generation before her time. In our own day, parents may feel that they come too far short of being saints, so they hesitate about urging their perhaps dimly-felt religion on their childrem. Yet in our Bible there is open to all fathers and mothers a means of placing their children In an atmosphere of Intense faith. Personal religious genius Is rare; but even though you may be anything any-thing but a genius, you still can bring to your child the treasures of the Bible, product of the highest inspiration and insight the world has known. Women of the Family TIMOTHY'S FATHER W81 Greek, probably not a Christian. He and Timothy may never have understood each other. It was the women of the family who molded the boy's mind and heart, his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, grand-mother, Lois. It is always so. It is the women of a family who have most influence influ-ence for faith or against it. The boy knows his mother before he knows anyone else. She teaches him to talk, he absorbs her attitudes atti-tudes and ideas even before he understands un-derstands them. If father and mother differ In religion, it is likely that childen will follow mother rather than father. (Copyright bj tb International Conncfl ei Reltqious Education oa behalf oi 40 Protectant danomlnatonj. fiJasd by WNU FtatoMj |