Children as arrows.
The psalmist takes far other than that pessimistic view, so common in our day, as to God's gift of children. Men now too often look upon them as so many misfortunes and encumbrances, and as compelling poverty and privation where else these evils had not been, and as so many channels through which trouble may come to the home in which they have been born. How beautifully and blessedly different is the teaching of this and the following psalm on this matter! Of course, where social conditions are such that, let a man be ever so willing to work, no work can be found for him, and toil as he will he cannot make a living, then the fact of a large family is, at any rate for a time, but an increase of sorrow. But then, such social conditions ought not to be, and the fact that by them what God designed to be so great a blessing is made to be only a terrible calamity, is reason enough why men should strive for a better condition of things. And there can be no doubt that many of man's laws and, yet more, man's sins do turn God's blessings into a curse. But children, it is never to be forgotten, were designed to be God's blessings, and in myriads of homes they are so. The special blessing the psalmist has in his mind, as coming through our children, is that they are as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. The similitude is a suggestive one.
I. THEY ARE SO FOR PROTECTION. Those children that are born when their parents are young will be of age to help and maintain their parents when these need such help. They defend their home from the attack of poverty and want. Long ere these have reached their home, these arrows have made them turn back.
II. FOR HELP IN THE BATTLE OF LIFE. The spur and stimulus which children impart to their parents, the pleasure they give, the love they awaken, the aspirations after good they arouse,—all these things are of vast help in life's battle, even "as arrows are," etc.
III. NEED TO BE CAREFULLY PREPARED. Arrows do not grow of themselves: they have to be wrought out with much thought and care. So our children.
IV. AND TO BE WELL AIMED. What is our aim for our children? The arrows will go where they are sent. How many parents there are who have no worthy aim for their children! They will be glad for them to "get on," to become rich, and to take good positions in society. If they have aim, it is no higher one than that. And those who profess the higher aim, that their children should be the Lord's, how badly, clumsily, carelessly, they seek that aim!
V. SENT FORTH WITH ALL POWER. See the "mighty man," how "he bends his bow and makes ready his arrow upon the string," and then draws it back to its full length, that it may speed with the more force on the way he would have it go; that is a picture of the strenuous, careful endeavor we should make to urge our arrows, our children, in the right way. But what all too little strenuousness there is in this matter!
VI. THEY ARE SURE TO WOUND, IF NOT KILL, SOMEWHERE. The foes of the home—want, godlessness, evil reputation and character, strife and ill will, hopelessness and despair, the malice of men, and much else, the children should slay, and not suffer them to come near us; and good children do this. But if we have not so trained them to thus serve the home, then they will turn and wound and pierce their parents to the heart. Bad children do this. Yes, always, they are "as arrows."—S.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK