"Honor your father and mother" was the theme of this column last issue. With this issue we begin a two-part series on turning the hearts of the parents to the children.

According to Malachi 4:6, turning the hearts is a two-way street—fathers (parents) to children and children to fathers (parents). How may we as parents turn our hearts to our children?

In this first part of the series, I'd like to share with you what my wife and I decided to do when our children were little. You see, we were childless for four years and feared we would never know what parenthood was like. In January 1968 at the ministerial conference in Pasadena, California, Herbert W. Armstrong anointed us for whatever impediment there may have been to conception.

One month later my wife conceived, and in November 1968 Janice (meaning "God's gracious gift") arrived. Fifteen months later, Susan was born and we were parents of not one but two precious children. Because we longed for children for so many years, we tried to treat our children as special blessings from God (Psalm 127:3).

We thought about how special it was to have a "Mother's Day" to honor Mother in May, and to have a "Father's Day" in June to honor Dad. So we decided to institute in our family a "Children's Day" in July to honor our children. We believed that modeling a respect for our children would help them understand respect for their parents. The intent was to treat them special on the second or third Sunday of July.

We would do something special with them—play miniature golf, go to a baseball game, go to the beach or just go to a nice place for lunch or dinner. We usually bought them each a nice gift just because we loved them. They thought this was really special, and we have kept it up for nearly 37 years.

Now, the point of this example is not to tell you to institute a "Children's Day," but to encourage you to explore ways to show and tell your children how special and how loved they are as blessings from God (Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4).

Paul urged the older women to teach the younger "to love their children" (Titus 2:4). We need to make every effort to reach out to our children that they may know just how special and how loved they are. For indeed they are precious not only to us but to their Heavenly Father as well (Acts 2:39).