10. [part]
[...] and more that through the Fall of Adam our human nature and entire being is altogether ruined. If you yourself will just pause, you will soon perceive it in yourself, indeed you will notice it among your playmates. The following show themselves: stubbornness, self will, fretting, being hard to get along with, anger, self love, envy, disobedience, contrariness, laziness, frivolity, secretiveness, impertinence, and I could name even more sinful bad habits, even among children whose God-fearing parents try to inculcate everything good in them. An old [hymn] verse [5] says, “Body and soul are mortally wounded, there is nothing healthy about human beings.” This is our situation by nature. And if Christ had not come into the world, if He had not taken our poor form and if He had not died willingly for our sins then we would have had to be condemned eternally. Dear Children, you must never forget this, and never think anything good of yourselves or that you are any better by nature than any other human being. But we want to thank the Savior from our hearts without ceasing that He offered His Blood and His Life for us, bearing our guilt and our punishment and has reconciled us to God so that God now looks on us in Christ Jesus as His Children. And when children give Him their hearts He purifies them from all evil. Then children receive the idea, “I will have nothing to do with bad things, which make the Savior sad. I will not dwell on bad ideas nor think about them, through which my heart will grow cold and dry towards the Savior. I will not treat my body and its members in a foolish way but praise Him in my body and my spirit. Through His Grace I will become obedient, industrious and faithful.” Such a child asks the Savior daily for this: “Let the merit of Your holy childhood benefit me; let that consecrate my childhood years and form me like the Child Jesus on earth.”
5. “Leib und Seel ist bis in den Tod verwundt am ganzen Menschen ist nichts gesund…”
Something
of Bodily Care for Children
Translated by Pastor Roy Ledbetter
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