When I was a boy in my father's house, still tender, and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said, "Lay hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands and you will live (Proverbs 4:3-4).

Children are information sponges.  Even really small children.  My two-year-old has memorized the lyrics to dozens of songs (everything from Michael Jackson to Cake to the Laurie Berkner Band), and he routinely astonishes us with his ability to navigate his way around our family's desktop computer -- often so he can listen to his favorite songs.  My five-year-old is learning to read, and it's amazing to see how quickly she can go from illiteracy to literacy, making it look almost easy at times.  My eight-year-old's ability to recall facts, figures, and statistics from four different sports is remarkable.  My children's ability to absorb and retain information is significant... Yet I fear that I'm not always making the most of the opportunity to speak into their lives at this phase of development.

I mean, song lyrics and sports statistics are great.  Reading skills are a highly valuable life skill.  But how can my kids' ability for information be applied to the most meaningful stuff?  The moral stuff?  The meaning-of-life type of stuff?

There's a strategic opportunity to invest in people when they're just boys and girls, still tender, still children hanging onto their mother's apron strings.  But too often, we say, "We'll wait to talk about that until you're older."  We feel uncomfortable talking about sexuality, class dynamics, political ideologies, and spiritual substance -- so we often try to sidestep these issues when our children bring them up.  We feed our kids as much as they can handle when it comes to music, sports, film, television, books, and so on... But we often leave them hungry, when it comes to truly meaningful, truly substantial subjects.  We all want to do better than that.  We all want to pass on the really important life lessons to our children, but sometimes we need a little reminder to get us going.

For me, the father-son dialogue from Proverbs chapter 4 is just such a reminder.  It shows me that wisdom and moral instruction can also be a valuable part of child-rearing, and it helps me to turn off the computer, put down the books, rest from our sports for a moment -- and talk with my kids about the really important stuff.