Proverbs 6 calls for reflective meditation. “My son keep your father’s commandment and forsake not your mother’s teaching. Bind them on your heart always … when you walk they will lead you … They will talk with you” (verses 20-22). Are mother’s and father’s fulfilling their responsibility today? A teaching technique is needed that fixes words of advice in the hearer’s heart that “they will talk” in their minds when the need arises.

Are children listening? Sometimes children are discouraged from being guided; of course, if parent’s provide no wise guidance, that adds to the tragedy. When today’s children become parents they may see their responsibility as providing food, shelter and clothing, sending them to school to be educated. All very good and necessary but Solomon says, “the reproofs of discipline are a way of life” (verse 23).

The result of a failure to provide discipline when necessary leads to “a worthless person, a wicked man (who) goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes …” (verses 12,13). Life to such is a sort of game to be played! The way many live today is starting to reflect the point Solomon is making here. He then goes on to say that a “perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing” (verses 14,15). Is not this prophetic of the fate awaiting our 21st Century’s way of life?

Chapter 7 begins with this advice from Solomon to the rising generation, “keep my words and treasure up my commandments and live”. The ultimate kind of living for those who do this and accept a divine relationship – and the responsibility of that relationship – is described in the words of Jesus in Luke 20. “Those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (verses 35,36).

Above all we do in life, let us heed our Heavenly Father’s instruction.