Word for the day by Christian Education Forum

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 Youth – a doorway to a fruitful life  

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
 V1 Remember your creator in the days of your youth.

 Youth is a season of great energy, openness and hope. It is also a time of great peril, temptation and traps. How we live our youth affects the rest of our lives. How well we apply ourselves in our studies, how diligent we are, and how we develop our mind and work ethic will have a lasting impact on our lives. We live in a time when the amount of distractions and temptations around us have increased significantly. In the midst of all this, this passage reminds us that we need to pay attention to our spiritual life.

Look at the lives of great men and women and often we find that they had sought God early in life. How we pay attention to and develop our spiritual life has a lasting impact on our life. The great energy of our youth if given to pursue God and His kingdom and His righteousness results in great fruitfulness and joy in the years ahead. Yet we have to seek Him with all our heart, not just for our own success. Our hearts have to be the right soil if we are to bear fruit thirty, sixty and hundred times what is sown. Just as becoming great at our profession takes many years of practice, becoming spiritually mature takes time, and involves going through the ups and downs of life and walking with God in the midst of them. It involves developing our spiritual senses, stepping out in faith and trusting God. Many times we say to ourselves “let me become successful and settled in life, and then I will seek God”. Yet, that is the wrong approach.

Now is the time to seek God, when we have the energy and the strength. Our lives on this earth are so brief and uncertain.  What if we have failed to seek God in our youth? Then today is the day to seek him sincerely (2 Cor 6:2). He has promised that He will draw near to those who seek Him (James 4:8) and that He will renew our strength (Isaiah 40:30-31).

PRAYER
O Lord, we entrust the youth into your hands. Strengthen their faith in you and help and protect them from the wiles of the enemy. May their prayer life help them withstand the temptations of this world. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. 1 Timothy 4:12

Tinku Alex, Carmel Mar Thoma Church, Boston 
Christian Education Forum, Diocese of NAE of the Mar Thoma Church

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