A Little More Ryle

I haven't forgotten. I've just been busy reporting on other random acts of fun in our household.

Isaac and Caleb playing at the river with Grandma and Grandpa Dauphin.

My littlest one just started crawling and getting into everything. It starts now with him. Good ole Ryle is reminding me again to pick up my bootstraps and get down and dirty in the throes of training. It's worth it. God calls me to it. Sometimes I feel so weary in it but it is good and as Ryle exhorts, much depends upon me and my diligence. God help me!

I hope the following words are encouraging, challenging and fun all rolled into one. And since it's been awhile, here's to J.C. Ryle on a Saturday.

Section 3: Train your children with an abiding persuasion on your mind that much depends upon you.

"Early habits (if I may so speak) are everything with us, under God. We are made what we are by training. Our character takes the form of that mold into which our first years are cast."

"He [God] gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the starting-point of life to believe what you tell them, and to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He gives you, in short, a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that the opportunity be not neglected, and thrown away. Once let slip, it is gone for ever."

"But I know also that God says expressly, 'Train up a child in the way he should go,' and that He never laid a command on a man which He would not give man grace to perform. And I know, too, that our duty is not to stand still and dispute, to go forward and obey. It is just in the going forward that God will meet us. The path of obedience is the way in which He gives the blessing."