Friday Assembly: Headmaster’s Address (February 10, 2017)
Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.
Imagine two roads, two paths. One path leads to death, the other path leads to life; one path is a narrow, crooked road that makes you get carsick, the other path is a straight highway with good pavement; one path runs you smack dab into a hedge of thorns, the other path leads you into green pastures by still waters.
Which path would it be better to travel down?
Now imagine you’ve brought your bike to the park where these two paths begin. Maybe you are just learning how to ride your bike. You’re using training wheels. It’s still hard to balance, and you need someone to give you a little push to get going, to walk alongside of you and steady you occasionally. You still need your parents to help you get going down the path.
You’re not very tall yet, and at the trail head, the spot where the two paths begin and then veer off from each other in different directions, it’s hard to see very far down the path. You don’t know where the path on the right leads. You don’t know where the path on the left goes.
But the person helping you with your bike does. Your mom and your dad have seen these paths before. They know which path ends up in the green pastures. They know which path ends up in the hedge of thorns. And so they point your bike in the right direction, and they give you a little push to start your trip.
At school and at home, you are being given everything you need for your trip. A helmet, a water bottle, a map showing where to go, a push to send you down the right path, and someone to run alongside you for a little while, to help you balance, to keep you from falling.
Your teachers and your parents are training you to ride your bike in the right direction, on the path that leads to life not death, and it is our fervent prayer that you will continue on that path your whole life and never depart from it—as a teenager, as a young adult, as a parent yourself, and all the way down into old age.
Paideia Living 