Bible Text: Amos 3:3 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Amos 3:3, KJV

In their book, First Things First, author Stephen Covey and his associate authors tell about attending a seminar where the instructor was lecturing on the importance of planning time. To impress his audience with the point he was making, the instructor took a wide-mouth jar or cylinder and filled it with fist-size rocks. Then he asked, “Is the jar full?” Noticing that no more large rocks could be placed in the jar, everybody nodded his head in the affirmative.

Then the instructor reached beneath the podium and took a bucket of gravel and poured it over the large rocks, shook it down in the cracks, and asked again, “Is the jar full?” This time everyone hesitated. Knowing they missed the first answer, they said, “Probably not!”

Right! Then he took a container of sand and poured it over the gravel until it sifted down and filled the remaining space. Same question: “Is the jar full?” Obviously no takers responded.

Then he took a pitcher of water and poured it in filling the entire jar with water. With finality the lecturer turned to his students and said, “Now, what’s the point?” Someone responded that the obvious moral was that you could always get more into your life. “No,” he countered, saying the real moral is that if you don’t get the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in later.

This is true of parenting just as it is true in planning your time. Behavioral psychologists say that a child learns half of everything he will know by age 3; three fourths by age seven. It is during that impressionable period of a youngster’s life that you are laying the foundation, placing the big rocks of life upon which everything else is built.

Seldom if ever does a parent realize how great is his responsibility when he wraps a baby tightly in a blanket and takes him home from the hospital. What happens in those early months and years determines to a large degree what kind of development emotionally, physically, and spiritually will follow in the life of a youngster.

What are some of those foundation stones which a life is built upon? Try these six for a solid foundation. #1–Commitment. #2–Care. #3–Communication. #4–Cohesiveness. #5–Constraint, and #6–Conveying what really counts–faith and values.

First–the importance of your commitment as a parent. Though my heart goes out to every single parent who lays a foundation alone, by and large, kids come with two hands and two feet, and require two parents to keep up with them. Parenting is basically a two-person task, and when two individuals love each other and are committed to their offspring, they provide the environment which enables growth and nurturing. Their model becomes a sex-education course, a role model, a set of values. Long ago, Amos, the prophet of old, asked the question, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3), and the obvious answer is no.

To what should parents commit? First–to each other. The best thing a dad can do for his children is to love their mother. They also need to commit to a set of values, deciding what is important, what is non-negotiable, and then live that value system. Finally, parents need to commit to serve the living God, bringing a taste of heaven into their home. “Seldom if ever,” wrote a juvenile court judge in a personal letter, “do I see a boy of girl in my court who has had the benefit of religious training.”

Getting those big rocks planted in the foundation is important–very important.

Resource reading: Psalm 127:1-2