The Need for Grandparents

Writing in Focus on the Family Magazine, Jay Kesler presented this probing assessment of children’s need for grandparents: “Young Timothy needed the strong spiritual roots provided by his mother and grandmother. And young people today, facing those same tensions, need godly parents and grandparents to help their own roots go deep so that they might withstand the storms of everyday life. “To meet that need, God, in His divine wisdom, ordained that each child should have six adults to provide care and backup. In ancient times, because of disease and accident, life expectancy was short.

Families were often broken up as fathers went off to war or mothers were sold into slavery. The involvement of the extended family, especially grandparents, was crucial to the survival of children. “In a similar way in the United States, matriarchs in the African-American community often proved to be the social strength to enable family life to continue amid the havoc wreaked by slavery. These grandparents, who gave their grandchildren a foundation of moral character, often persevered with the strength gleaned from prayer and deep faith in the ultimate justice of God.

“As we draw to the close of the twentieth century, many families will face similar challenges-not because of slavery, but because of the breakdown of the moral and social fabric of society. In single-parent families and in homes where both parents work, grandparents are becoming increasingly important . . . . “I’m making a passionate call for a recommitment to Christian grandparents. The whole weight of responsibility cannot rest on an individual set of grandparents or a single grandmother or grandfather, but we can stand in the gap in our particular situations, as God asked in Ezekiel 22:30.”